
. 5133' 



OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR OF 

The American Slave-Trade 



THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE 
HORN. 



THE PORT OF MISSING 


SHIPS. 


(Fiction.) 




OUR NAVY IN THE WAR 


WITH 


SPAIN. 




THE HISTORY OF OUR 


NAVY. 


(Including above volume.) 


5 vols. 


THE FUGITIVE. (Fiction.) 
— 





/ ^ 

" ^ yy 



i? 



THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 




KlDNAl'IMiNij HLN JOHNSON UECAMU A bLAVL HIMSELF. 

Sec i)a«e 54- 
\ 



THE AMERICAN 
SLAVE-TRADE 

AN ACCOUNT OF 

ITS ORIGIN. GROWTH 
AND SUPPRESSION 



BY 



JOHN R. SPEARS 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

WALTER APPLETON CLARK 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1907 






Copyright, 1900, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



moA omecTORY 
priiNTma and sookbinoing company 

NEW YOBK 



^ 

^ 



^h 



^0 

ALL WHO SINCERELY 

STRIVE TO UNDERSTAND AND OBEY 

THE DIVINE COMMAND 

THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF 



PREFACE 

This history of the American slave-trade grew out 
of a study of tlie history of the American navy. The 
navy was in a way connected with the slave-trade, 
but the subject was so large that only the briefest 
mention of what the navy did on the slave coast 
could be made in "The History of Our Navy." The 
discovery that our naval ships, in forces ranging from 
a single schooner to a frigate squadron, had cruised 
on the coast of Africa at intervals during a period 
of nearly forty years for the proclaimed purpose 
of suppressing the slave-trade without accomplish- 
ing so much as a restriction of it, determined me 
to give the subject a separate consideration. "What 
I have gathered I have set down here as well as 
I could. 

As it seems to me, the facts form the most remark- 
able story known to the history of commercial enter- 
prises. Consider, for instance, the origin of the 
trade. It was established because of the sincere pity 
of a tender-hearted and most praiseworthy priest for 
an outraged people. No other trade ever had such 
an exalted origin, and yet the cruelties and horrors of 
it far surpass those described in any other branch 
of history. The soldiers who have looted cities, the 



Viii PREFACE 

pirates who have made passengers and sailors walk 
the plank, and the religious zealots who have burned 
their opponents at the stake, were more merciful than 
the slave-traders. 

Further than that, no trade ever paid such large 
returns on the investments. More remarkable still, 
the trade at one time made some who followed it 
heroes, but at last degraded all who were connected 
with it beyond the power of words to describe. 

But now that I have written out the facts, 1 am 
bound to say, here in advance, and to repeat further 
on, that the intrinsic evil in the slave-trade was not 
found in the slaughter of the helpless during the 
raids in Africa, or the horrors of the middle passage, 
or the brutality of planters who deliberately worked 
their slaves to death as a matter of business polic}^ ; 
nor was it in all of these combined. I cannot say all 
that is in my thought, but it is a fact that the slave 
trade and the plantations might have been carried on 
profitably without any cruelty whatever to the slave. 
It is a matter of knowledge among people now living 
that many planters promoted the physical comforts 
and added to the mental pleasures of their slaves, 
while here and there a ship was found to make the 
middle passage without losing a WW. The horrors of 
tlie trade that cried aloud to heaven for more than 
three hundred years were merely the grosser natural 
outgrowths of the root evil in it. 

Nor is that all. If we look at the story with judi- 
cial mind (and it is necessar}-, though difficult, to do 
so) we shall find that the ills brought ni)on the domi- 



PKEFACE 



IX 



nant race by the slave-trade and slavery are more to 
be deplored than those inflicted upon the manifestly 
oppressed negro. 

At first thought it may seem a story to make an 
American ashamed of his country. Certainly the 
power of the slave-ship owner in national politics 
before the civil war was something that makes us mar- 
vel now. From the enactment of the law that made 
the slave-trade piracy until Abraham Lincoln became 
President the policy of pretence that prevailed in 
connection with the slave-trade was infinitely dis- 
graceful to the nation. But when all the facts are 
fairly considered, it is found that we were steadily 
developing, under adverse circumstances, a love of 
exact Justice. We washed away our shame, at last, 
with unstinted blood, and then a time came when our 
people took up arms to give liberty even to an alien 
race. The history of the slaver days is worth con- 
sideration if only that it may be contrasted with the 
history of the end of the Nineteenth Century. 

This book has been written almost wholly from 
public documents, biographies, stories of travellers, 
and other sources of original information. I am under 
especial obligations to the work of Professor Du Bois 
on the suppression of the slave-trade for its full lists 
of references, and to Mr. A. S. Clark, without whose 
knowledge of the book trade I should have been 
unable to complete my collection of authorities. 

J. R. S. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 1 

THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 

The Unnamed Diitcli Slaver of 1619— First Slaver Fitted Out in American 
Waters and tlie First American-built Slaver— When Human Beings were 
Frequently a Part of a Ship's General Cargo— How a Good Priest, 
through a Love of Humanity, Promoted the Traffic— Days when Chris- 
tian Missionaries Found Profit in the Trade, and It Hurt the Conscience 
of No One Engaged in It— Kings and Nobles as Slave-traders— A Slaver 
Contract that was Considered a Magnificent Triumph of Diplomacy— 
The Yankee Slavers' Successful Stroke for Free Trade and Sailors' Rights 
—Extent of the Early Tratlic • . Ai^^ / 

CHAPTER II 

OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS 

David Lindsay as a Typical American Slaver of the Eighteenth Century— 
With a Rotten Ship that Showed Daylight Through Her Seams "Al 
Round Her Bow Under Deck " He Reached the Slave-coast, Gathered 
His Cargo in Spite of Fevers, Deaths in the Crew, and Competition, 
and Finally Landed at Barbadoes with "All in Helth and Fatt "— An As- 
trologer's Chart for a Slaver's Voyage— Tales of the Slaver Vikings 
of Liverpool— Debt of Early American Commerce to the Slave-trade 
—John Paul Jones a Slaver, Page 21 

CHAPTER 111 

WHEN VOYAGES WENT AWRY 

Tales of Trouble When Lying on the Slave-coast— " We are Ready to 
Devour One Another, for Our Case is Desprit"— A Second Mate's 
Unlucky Trip in a Long Boat— Sickness in the Hold as Well as Among 



^y 



Xii CONTEXTS 

the Crew— Cocoaiiuts and Oranges could not Serve in Place of Water 
—Story of tlie Mutiny on the Slaver Perfect — Risks the Underwriters 
Assumed — The Proportion of Disastrous Voyages, .... Page )i 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SLAVtR AND HER OUTFIT ^ 

There were Tiny Ships in the Trade— One Vessel had a Capacity of 5,000 
Gallons of Molasses Only, and even Open Row-boats were used in the 
Nineteenth Century— Dimensions of a Slaver's Timbers— The Famous 
Venm, a Forerunner of the Yankee Clippers— Steamers that were in the 
Trade— The Blubber Kettles of Whalers used fur Boiling Rice and Yams 
— Rum, Guns, and Coin were the Favorite Articles of Traffic, but Silks, 
Laces, Parasols and Other Goods for the Use of Women of Education 
and Delicate Tastes were Wanted— A Naval Officer's Estimate for a 
Slaver's Outfit, Page 36 

CHAPTER V 

ON THE SLAVE-COAST 

PhA'Sical Features of Land and Sea— Peculiarities of the Aborigines and some 
Characteristics that were not Peculiar to Them — Gathering Slaves for 
the Market— A Trade that Degenerated from a System of Fair Barter 
into the Most Atrocious Forms of Piracy Conceivable — Utter Degra- 
dation of White Traders— The Slaughter at Calabar— Prices Paid fur 
Slaves — The Barracoons of Pedro Blanco and Da Souza— When Negroes 
Voluntarily Sold Themselves, Page 44 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 

Stowing Slaves for the Voyage from Africa to a Market— The Galleries- 
Compelled to Lie " Spoon-fashion " to Save Deck Space— A Plan by 
which the 'Tween Decks Space was PackM Full— Effects of the Ship's 
Rolling on the Manacled Cargo— Living Slaves Jettisoned to Make a 
Claim on the Underwriters— Horrors of "The Blood-Stained Gloria'" — 
Blinded Crews of the Rodenr and the Z.cj;/— Suicide Among the Tortured 
Slaves— Pitiful Tale of a Weanling's Deatii— Punishing Mutiny on the 
American Slaver Keiitiukv — Slave Ships Named for Two of Our 
Presidents Pa^e da 



^ 



CONTENTS Xiii 

CHAPTER VII 

THE SLAVERS' PROFIT 

Nine Hundred Pounds on One Voyage of the Newport Slaver Sanderson, a 
Vessel that was Offered tor Sale at £^10 with No Buyers— One Voyage 
of the Liverpool Slaver Enterprise that Paid /;24,430— Details of Ex- 
penses and Receipts on a Voyage of the Ninety-ton Schooner La For- 
tuna—k Baltimore Schooner's Profit of $100,000— When the Wenus 
Cleared $200,000— Sums Paid to Captains and Crews— Slave Transpor- 
tation Compared with Modern Passenger Traffic Page 82 

CHAPTER VIll 

SLAVER LEGISLATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

The Colonies often Levied Taxes on Imported Slaves, and these Duties were 
in Rare Cases Prohibitive, but this Legislation was always Based on 
Commercial Considerations Only, or else a Fear of Negro Insurrections 
—Great Britain Never Forced the Slave-trade on them Against Their 
Virtuous Protest— Georgia's Interesting Slave History, . , . Page go 

CHAPTER IX 

THE EARLY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION 

The Words and Deeds of the Fanatics— The Quakers- Slaves that were 
Freed by Baptism— Granville Sharp as a Liberator— A Fanatic's Politi- 
cal Creed Plainly Stated— Widespread Influence of the Somerset Case ^ .. ^ 

when the Right Prevailed in England— A Policy that would not Square j^ j^ 

Well with a Practical Business Sense of Things— The American Declara- / V' 

tion of Independence and the Black Men Page 9S - ^ 

CHAPTER X 

THE SLAVERS OUTLAWED 

British Abolitionists and Their Work— After a Crusade of only Twenty 
Years, They Outlawed a Trade that, from a Business Point of View, had 
been the most Profitable in the United Kingdom-The Slave-trade and 
the American Constitution— Inauguration of the System of Compro- 
mises that Led to the Civil War— Slave-trade Legislation of the States 
—The Act of March 2, 1807 P'^i^ '06 



. <y 



\e^. 



xiv CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XI 

TALES OF THE EARLIER SMUGGLERS 

A Slaver's Ferry Between HLuana and the Florida Ports— Amelia Island as 
a Smugglers' Headquarters— The Barataria Pirates and the Smuggling 
Trade— Extent of the Illegal Traffic— A Georgia Governor who Lett 
His Post to Become a Slave Smuggler, Page 122 

CHAPTER XII 

SLAVERS DECLARED PIRATES ^ 

Fines and Imprisonment with Rewards for Informers were not Sufficient 
to Stop Slave Smuggling— Workings of the Prohibitive Legislation 
Illustrated by the Doings of the Knife-inventor Bowie and the Pirate 
Lalllte — Slaves Sold by the Pound — Influences that Led to the 
Piracy Act P^^i^ '^7 

CHAPTER Xlll 

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION FOR SUPPRESSING THE TRADE 

Work of British Diplomacy among the Continental Powers— When Spain 
agreed to Abolish the Slave-trade for a Money Consideration and 
Failed to Fulfil Her Contract— A Free Offer of "Sailors' Rights" which 
We Refused to Accept— A Shameful Record in American Slaver Legisla- 
tion—The Ashburtun Treaty, f'^g^ '34 



CHAPTER XIV 

TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 

How the Laws were Interpreted— Slavers that would Make a Fierce Fight- 
Famous American Privateers that Became Slavers— Whole Cargoes of 
Slaves Thrown to the Sharks to Avoid the Confiscation of Vessels- 
Tales of the Rapido, the Regitlo, and Hemans's Bnlla>ite—k Cargo of 
Slaves Bound to Anchor and Chain and Tiuown Overboard— A Slaver 
Who Coolly Murdered His Sweetheart and Cliild— A Trade that was 
Lucrative in PropnrtiL.n to Its Heinousness l\ige 140 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER XV 

THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 

Story of the Half-hearted, V/holly Futile Work of Blockading the African 
Coast— Reward of an OtTicer Who Earnestly Strove to Stop the Trade 
—An Interesting Period in the Career of Commodore M. C. Perry- 
American and British Squadrons O^mpared-The Sham Work of the 
Buchanan Administration Page 148 

CHAPTER XVI 

FREE-NEGRO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 

England Led the Way by Establishing a Colony at Sierra Leone to Provide 
a Home for Negroes Carried from the United States during the Revolu- 
tionary War— The Enterprise Saved by the Sturdy Maroons— Origin 
of the American Society for Colonizing Free People of Color— Life of 
the Colonists at Cape Mesurado— The Nation of Liberia Organized— 
An Ape of Philanthropy, P'.tge 160 

CHAPTER XVll 

TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 

Colored Men from New York Prison Sent to New Orleans and Sold— Steal- 
ing Slaves in New Jersey for the Southwest Market — Coastwise Slavers 
that Lost their Human Cargoes in British Islands— Madison Washing- 
ton a Negro Worthy of his Name— Joshua R. Giddings and the Coast- 
wise Trade-^Extent of the Coastwise Tratfic Page I-]) 

CHAPTER XVIII 

STORY OF THE AMISTAD 

A Cuban Coastwise Slaver that may have been Used to Smuggle Slaves Into 
the United States— On the Way from Havana to Puerto Principe the 
Slaves Overpowered the Crew, and Started Back to Africa, but were 
Beguiled to Long Island— Judicially Decided that Slaves Unlawfully Held 
have a Right to Take Human Life in a Stroke for Liberty, . Page 184 



xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XIX 

LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 

Notable Slave-ships that Plied between the African Coast and the Unidet 
States just before the Civil War— When the IVanderer Carried the Flag 
of the New York Yacht Club to the Congo — Troubles of a Smuggler as 
described in his Letter-book — A Movement for Legally Reopening the 
Slave-trade — Dream of a Slave Empire, Page 194 

CHAPTER XX 

WHEN THE END CAME 

Buchanan's Administration and the Slave-trade— When the Sham Efforts to 
Suppress Came to an End — Story of Captain Gordon of the Erie, the 
First Slaver Pirate to be Executed in the United States, . . Page 21 j 

PAGH 

APPENDIX A, 225 

APPENDIX B, 229 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Kidnapping Ben Johnson Became a Slave Himself . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Bringing One that was Bound and Gagged 24 

After a Raid 48 

A Wild Dash for Life was Made 64 

tvery Soul on Board was Blind 72 

He Applied the Lash not only to Make Tiiem Eat but to Make 
Them Sing 96 

It was a Malaria or Death-mist that 1 Saw Rising . . . .128 

She Walked to the Ship's Side and Dropped the Body into the Sea . 144 

Then lie Cast Loose the Anchor t56 

They were Seen to Throw Slaves Overboard Shackled Together . 172 

The Slaves on the Ship had Mutinied 192 

The Human Cargo was Under the Charge of the Old Rice-field 
Negroes 216 



CHAPTER I 

THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 

The Unnamed Dutch Slaver of 1619— First Slaver Fitted Out in 
American Waters and the First American-built Slaver- 
When Human Beings were Frequently a Part of a Ship's 
General Cargo— How a Good Priest, through a Love of 
Humanity, Promoted the Traffic- Days when Christian 
Missionaries Found Prolit in the Trade, and It Hurt the 
Conscience of No One Engaged in It— Kings and Nobles 
as Slave -Traders— A Slaver Contract that was Consid- 
ered a Magnificent Triumph of Diplomacy— The Yankee 
Slavers' Successful Stroke for Free Trade and Sailors' 
Rights — Extent of the Early Traffic. 

Ox a hot day late in the month of August, 1619, 
while the people of the little British settlement called 
Jamestown, in what is now the State of Virginia, were 
busily engaged in the work of establishing homes on 
the borders of the great American wilderness, an 
alarm was raised that a ship was coming with the tide 
up from the sea. Only one more startling cry than 
that could have been heard — a w\arning that hostile 
Indians were coming ; but in those days, when the 
fighting between nations nominally at peace might 
cost more lives than were lost in our war with Spain, 
the approach of an unknown ship, to a settlement as 
weak as Jamestowm, was a most serious matter. It 
was the more serious for the reason that Spain, in 

1 



2 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

those days, laid claim to all of North America, and 
was threatening to come to the Chesapeake Bay and 
lay waste the settlement there as an encroachment 
upon her rights. 

The stranger was a queer-looking craft, if we may 
judge her by modern standards, for she was, as all 
ships then were, short and thick — bluff-bowed and 
round at the stern — while she towered so high out of 
water at each end that the term "forecastle," which 
was then and is now applied to any structure at the 
bow of a ship, was a word of obvious significance. 
There was literally a castle on her bow, and another, 
called a poop, on her stern. Her sails, too, of which 
she carried, doubtless, two on the fore and the main 
masts, and one on the mizzen, were like great bags 
bellying out before the wind. AVhen compared with 
the flat canvas of a modern ship it is easy to see that one 
would have difliiculty in securing a crew for such a ship 
in these days. But more interesting than the form of 
either hull or sail was the row of black-muzzled cannon 
that projected through the bulwarks on each side ; and 
altogether it is not mere fancy to say that the alarm of 
such a ship approaching JamestoAvn carried tremors 
of fear to the breasts of the weak, and added throbs to 
the hearts of the strong as they hurried to get their 
weapons and go down to the river bank to receive 
her. 

But as the stranger drew near, the trained eyes of 
the colonists saw many signs to allay their fears. She 
was flying the Dutch flag, for one thing, and the Dutch 
were then the h\adlng traders of the M'orld. Moreover, 
it was apparent that her cannon were neither manned 
nor cast loose for action ; the attitudes and the work 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 3 

of her crew told convincingly that trade, and not war, 
was wanted, and, seeing this, the ready muskets of the 
colonists were laid aside that a friendly welcome might 
be extended. 

Then came the ship to the shore, where her lines 
were made fast to the near-by trees, and her captain 
walked over a gang-plank to greet the colonists under 
the wide-spread, thick-leaved branches, and tell them 
that he had brought merchandise to exchange for the 
products of the settlement. 

Few more interesting ships than this are known to 
the history of America. The Mayflower only, of all 
the ships that followed Columbus, may be compared to 
her, and that by way of contrast, because the New 
England ship came with men irhn "n]],"ht a form of 
liberty, while the Dutchman came to introduce a kind 
of slavery. Among the articles of merchandise that 
the Dutch captain had to offer the colonists were 
twenty human beings, negroes brought from the coast 
of Africa, and his ship was probably the first slave- 
trader to visit what is now the coast of the United 
States. 

From a sailor's point of view also the story of this 
slaver is remarkable ; in fact, it is one of the most 
singular stories known to the history of commerce. 
Thus, we know that she hailed from Flushing, and the 
number of slaves that she brought. There is no doubt 
about her shape and rig. We are well enough as- 
sured as to where she landed, and we are even justified 
in saying how she was secured to the river's bank. 
There is an old record containing the names of some of 
the slaves she landed. But her name and the name ot 
her commander have been lost beyond recovery. She 



\ 



4 THE AMERICA^- yLAVE-TRADE 

appears above our horizon like a strange sail at sea, 
showing unmistakably from onr present point of 
view that something is wrong with her ; we pass her 
close enough at hand to see on her decks men and 
women in distress whom we are wholly unable to re- 
lieve, and then she fades away in the mists astern, and 
is lost forever. 

We are indebted to John Rolfe, the man that mar- 
ried the Indian maiden Pocahontas (and so became the 
most famous squaw-man in history), for the greater 
part of what we know about the first slave-trader to 
visit our shores. Rolfe was in Jamestown when the 
Dutchman came to Virginia waters, and it is his record 
that says : "a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty 
Negars" came to Jamestown late in August, 1619. 
—*«aiilier accounts this ship is called a Dutch trader, 
instead of a " man of warre," while others still call her 
a privateer. Taking all the statements together, tlie 
truth appears to be that she was built as a cargo car- 
rier, and yet was armed, and had a license permitting 
her to prey on the commerce of the enemies of Holland. 
Iler chief business was as a trader, but incidentally she 
was a lawful privateer. At what point in Africa, or 
liow, she obtained the negroes is not known. 

The story of how she happened to carry her slaves 
to Virginia is of especial interest linre because it in- 
cludes that of the first ship fitted in United States ter- 
ritory for the slave trade. 

In the year 1619 '•' the rapacious and unscrupulous" 
Captain Samuel Argall was ruler of the colony of Vir- 
ginia. Argall was able, cnei-getic, adroit, and con- 
scienceless. He was what ward politicians would call 
a "heeler" of the Earl of Warwick, a man at once 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS fj 

rich and unscrupulous. Among the Earl's possessions 
was the ship Treasurer, and Argall owned a sliare of 
her. 

During the year 1619 tlie Treasurer came to Virginia, 
armed as a privateer, and bearing a commission from 
the Duke of Savoy permitting her to cruise against the 
Spaniards. Presumably intending such a cruise, she 
cleared out for the West Indies, where, as her log-book 
shows, she fell in with a Dutch letter of mai'C[ue and 
told him that slaves were Avanted in Virginia. 

It is fair to presume that the Dutchman at once 
headed away for the Chesapeake, because John Pory, 
secretary of the Virginia colony, in a letter to Sir 
Dudley Carleton, dated September 13, 1019, mentions 
" the man-of-war of Flushing," and sa3^s : " The oc- 
casion of this ship's coming hither was an accidental 
consortship in the West Indies with the Treasurer^ 
He adds that the Dutchman wanted to buy provis- 
ions, "of which the master pleaded that his vessel 
was in dire need." 

It is a matter of record that the Treasurer also 
brought negro slaves to Virginia, and a woman called 
Angela was sold to a Mr. Bennett. A record of her 
may be found in the census record of Virginia made 
in 1625, according to Hotten's "Original List of Emi- 
grants, etc." 

It is possible that the Treasurer returned ahead of 
the Dutchman ; but, because the Dutchman was in 
need of food, and because John Rolfe speaks of the 
Dutchman's slaves only, it is fair to infer that the 
Dutchman came first. 

The records tell why the Treasurer landed but one 
slave. Says the "Declaration" of the Virginia Conn- 



5 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

cil, made in 1623 : "Finding Captain Argall, the set- 
ter-of-her-out, departed tlience, she withdrew herself 
instantly from the new Governor's power, and went to 
the Somer Islands, then discharged her booty, \vliich 
were a certain number of negroes, all of which, even 
those that belonged as shares unto the mariners 
(whereof they have not long since complained in 
court), were taken and placed on the said Earl's 
lands, as belonging to his lordship, and so continue," 

It is perhaps worth mentioning that it has been 
asserted that the slaves ascribed to the Dutchman 
really came from the Treasurer^ and that the letters 
and other Virginia documents relating to the matter 
were deliberately false, because the Virginians feared 
the Spanish w^ould come to avenge the raids which 
the Treasurer had made in the West Indies. But a 
careful reading of all the available matter on the sub- 
ject shows no real foundation for the assertion. 

As to the Trcasuref s career, a word more must be 
told, because, as has been said, she was the first slaver 
fitted out in America. She had visited the coast occa- 
sionally as a trader between England and the colonies 
since 1613, but had not been in the slave-trade until 
1619. In this voyage to the West Indies she was 
"manned with the ablest men in the colony" (see 
" Declaration " of 1623), but on reaching Bermuda she 
was declared to be unseawortliy. Iler arms were taken 
out of her and she was broken up. The robbing of her 
crew was a^ natural incident of tlie trade, and in after 
years common enough. 

One more question as to the first slave-carrying 
ships in the American trade remains to be considered 
— a question that has been raised in connection Avith 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 7 

the Spanish settlement of Florida, and with the Norse 
discoveries on the New England coast. If it be ad- 
mitted that Eric the Red landed on the New England 
coast, then it is probable that he carried a woman 
slave ashore with him. That the Spaniards had negro 
slaves in their settlement in Florida is not now dis- 
puted. Peter Menendez, who held a commission of 
the King of Spain for a settlement in Florida, landed 
at St. Angustine on September 8, 1565. He undoubt- 
edly had negro slaves in his party. If anyone wishes 
to make an exhaustive study of the matter of the 
landing of the first slaves in America, he can find 
nearly all the references to authorities needed in the 
Magazine of American History for November, 1891 ; 
but the question of interest to the present history is 
not when the first slaves were brought within the 
present limits of the United States, but when the first 
slave-ship came here in the prosecution of its traffic in 
human beings. Certainly neither the Viking nor the 
Spaniard came as a slave-merchant. 

The first American-built slaver of which there is 
definite I'ecord was the ship Desire, a vessel of 120 
tons, built at Marblehead, in 1636. It does not appear 
that she was in the trade to Africa, but Winthrop's 
Journal has the following under the date of February 
26, 1638 : 

"Mr. Pierce in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned 
from the West Indies after seven months. He had 
been at Providence, and brought some cotton and to- 
bacco and negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from 
Tortugas." To this is added a remark worth consid- 
ering : " Dry fish and strong liquors are the only com- 
modities for those parts." 



8 THE AMEKICAX SLAVE-TEADE 

Meantime anotlier slave-ship had come to Virginia 
— the FortiLue, Captain Grey, of London. While on 
the coast of Africa she had fallen in with an Angola 
ship loaded with slaves, and had captured her. The 
slaves were carried to Virginia and exchanged for 
eighty-five hogsheads and five butts of tobacco, 
which were sold in London. This was in 1630. 

That the Dutch introduced African slaves as soon as 
they obtained a foothold in America need not be said 
to those who are familiar with the history of New 
York. They tried, at first, after the custom of the 
times, to enslave the aboriginal inhabitants, but the 
task was found so harassing and unprofitable that 
they soon sought supplies of blacks from Africa. 
In fact enslaving red men led to such trouble that a 
wall was built across the lower end of Manhattan 
Island, where Wall street is now found, to keep red 
lovers of liberty from driving the Dutch slave-catchers 
over the Battery beach into the bay. 

The first formal mention of negro slaves in the 
Dutch Manhattan documents is found in the thirtieth 
clause of the Charter of Liberties and Exemptions of 
1629. It says: "The company Avill use their en- 
deavors to snpply the colonists with as many blacks as 
they conveniently can.'' The New Project of Liberties 
and Exemptions of a later date says "the Incorpo- 
rated West India Company shall allot to each Patroon 
twelve Black men and women out of the ])rizps in 
which Negroes shall be found.'' Untiucslionably 
the first slave-ships in the trade to Manhattan Island 
were privateers, as the first slaver in Virginia was, 
or they were men-of-war. 

Just when the first slaver reached New York is no- 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 9 

where stated, but we can prove that it was within a 
few years after the tirsfc blacks were landed in Vir- 
ginia. In 1G44 Director-General Kieft gave liberty to 
a number of slaves who had "served the company 
eighteen or nineteen years." That is to say they had 
been taken into the company's service in 1625 or 
1626. 

Of the introduction of negro slaves at other points 
along the coast nothing need be said here. It was 
in those earliest years a very small trade. There were 
no ships engaged in carrying slaves exclusively on the 
high seas, so far as the record shows, until about 1630, 
when the Fortune captured the Angola slaver. The 
slaves were merely a part of the " general cargo" of 
that day. In 1647 the Dutch on Manhattan Island 
wrote of "the slave-trade, that hath lain so long dor- 
mant, to the great damage of the company." In 1635' 
the whole number of slaves imported into Virginia 
was but twenty-six. In 1642 only seven were imported, 
and in 1649 only seventeen. There is no record of the 
total importations, but it is certain that the traffic in 
all the colonies combined amounted to only a few 
hundred previous to 1650— certainly fewer in num- 
ber than would have made a single cargo in later 
years. 

Trivial as were these transactions from a commercial 
point of view, the facts are all of importance here, not 
only because they belonged to the beginning of the 
trade, but because they are helpful to an understanding 
of the light in which the colonists saw the ti-ade. Did 
the colonists think, as they bargained for the blacks, 
that there was the beginning of a "fatal traffic" that 
was "imposed upon them from without"— did they 



10 '-I'UE AMERICAN SLAVE-TKADE 

" lay aside scruples against " a traffic in human beings 
before they exchanged their products for the "twenty 
Negars" ? 

The student who looks to see why this Virginia 
colony was established may see, first of all, in " The 
True and Sincere Declaration," published in 1609, 
what the colonists said was their chief object. It 
reads: "To preach and baptize into the Christian 
Religion, and, by the propagation of the Gospell, to re- 
cover out of the amies of theDevill, a number of poore 
and miserable soules wrapt up unto death in almost in- 
vincible ignorance ; to endeavour the fulfilling and ac- 
complishment of the number of the elect which shall 
be gathered out of all corners of the earth and to add 
our myte to the Treasury of Heaven." 

They believed that was their chief object, but we 
have another view of their habits of thought. 

In a letter written by Captain John Smith in 1614 
we find the following regarding the sport of fishing in 
the waters of the colony : 

"And is it not prettj^ sport to pull up twopence, 
sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul 
and veer a line? " 

One may search the entire literature of that day 
without finding another sentence so significant of the 
spirit of the age as well as of the colonists — the spirit 
that measured even its sport in fishing by counting 
the market value of each fish taken. In all sincerity 
they would proclaim that missionary work was the 
first object in making the settlement ; the}" did truly 
wish to add their "myte "to the number of "the 
elect," but with their missionary purposes there was 
found a proclaimed and unrepressed determination 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS H 

to make money. They had religious instructors who 
turned from a contemplation of the gold-paved streets 
of their heavenly home to talk of pay streaks in the 
mines of their wilderness home beyond the sea. 
And when they had arrived, they laid out a town site, 
boomer fashion, after which there was "no talk, no 
hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, 
loadegold." 

But, alas, the dirt did not pan out. They sent a 
cargo of glittering stuff home in the first Siqyply, but 
it was worthless, so they turned to "pitch, tar, and 
soap ashes" ; also to sassafras, with such vigor that 
even the "gentlemen" of the colony went to work with 
axes and thereby blistered their soft hands until the}^ 
swore wicked oaths " at every other stroke" of their 
axes. For this the}^ were publicly punished, so that 
they were led to hold their tongues, commonly, what- 
ever their thoughts might be. 

But "pitch, tar, and soap ashes" also failed to 
make them rich, or even comfortable, and the colony 
was at the point of absolute extinction when John 
Rolfe, the squaw man, introduced the cultivation of to- 
bacco in 1G12. With tobacco came, at last, prosperity, 
but only at a terrible price. To grow the crop required 
he severest kind of toil, and, what was worse, the work 
had to be done under conditions that proved deadly to 
the colonists of every class. 

With these facts held in mind let us recall the 
further fact that the greater part of the chopping and 
digging was done by "apprentices"— a real "working- 
class"— a class of men (afterward women were in- 
cluded) who were brought from their homes in Eng- 
land under contract to serve for a stated number of 



12 1"HE AMErjCAX SLAVE-TRADE 

years, and were sold to the V^irginla planters. The 
whole colonial labor S3^stem was based on the appren- 
tice sj'stem, and it is a well-known fact that manj^ 
men of education and ability came to the colonies 
as "apprentices," and were sold out as merchandise 
was. 

Even that law of Massachusetts in 1641 so often 
quoted to prove that the colonists there were opposed 
to human slavery proves, in fact, that voluntary 
slavery was common. It says: "There shall neve** 
be any bond slavery amongst us, unles it be Lawfull 
captives, taken in just wars, [or such] as [shall] wiJl- 
Ingly sell tliemselmsP 

Holding in mind these facts, consider next the 
climate of the tobacco-growing region. The extinction 
of the colony was at one time threatened. Every 
immigrant had to endure i\vd "seasoning" fever, and 
tlie percentage of deaths was frightful. 

In this condition of affairs came a trader who offered 
to exchange twenty black laborers (who would need 
no "seasoning") for the products of the land which 
the colonists had in abundance. 

AVere men wlio had never obtained a laborer save b 
purchase, and men who themselves had voluntari: . 
submitted to being bought and sold, to have th'^ <- 
consciences afflicted at the thought of buying the»e 
strangers? Such an idea could not enter their heads. 
Tiie fact is that the English Missionary Society that, 
in the seventeenth century, suj)plied all English-Amer- 
ican colonies with pious pabulum, owned a plantation 
in Barbadoes and worked it with slaves, while the 
great Quaker Fox, after a visit to the West Indies, 
hud nothing to say about the principle involved in the 



THE-TEADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 13 

traffic, although he was careful to denounce the cruel 
treatment of slaves. 

One more question in connection with this introduc- 
tion of negro slaves must be considered briefly. Did 
it pa}'? Let the facts answer. The planters in the 
tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar regions not only in- 
creased in number from year to year, but they built 
finer houses, bought finer clothes and books, and lived 
in more expensive fashion from generation to genera- 
tion. 

Thus we read: "Everything is by God's blessing 
in a good condition ; and in consequence of the em- 
ployment of the negroes, which were from time to time 
introduced from Angola into Brazil, in planting grain, 
flour is produced in such quantity that what always 
used to cost eight or ten guilders still continues to be 
sold at the rate of six stivers." * Such quotations 
may be multiplied almost indefinitely. In Georgia, 
the one colony where no slaves were allowed, in early 
days, the planters became so eager for them that their 
regular toast when drinking together was " Here's 
for the one thing needful !" 

In short, to sum up the facts, slaves were introduced 
into United States territory in answer to a demand 
for labor. They were purchased by men who were ac- 
customed to the purchase and sale of laborers, and no 
one's conscience was in any way hurt by the transac- 
tion. It was a good business proposition for that day, 
and for two centuries, at least, thereafter. 

As for the early West India traffic, for which but 
brief space can be allowed, it appears that as early as 
1503 negroes were carried to Hayti and put at work 

• See Vol. I., 167, New York Colonial Documents. 



14 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

on the plantations there. Herrera writes of these ne- 
groes that they "prospered so much in the colony that 
it was the opinion that unless a negro should happen 
to be hung he would never die, for as yet none had 
been known to perish from infirmity." Here was the 
very inception of the American trade. When the 
Spaniards tried enslaving the aborigines of the island, 
the unfortunate red men withered like green corn 
under the hot winds of the unirrigated American 
desert. Bartholomew de las Casas, filled with pity for 
the dying Indian race, rose up in its defence. Good 
people have since been moved to apologize for and ex- 
plain what this Dominican did, but his acts need no 
apology from any man. To save the race unfit for 
labor there, the Dominican proposed substituting ne- 
groes who were both physically and mentally capable 
of enduring even the work of digging gold in the tor- 
rid zone under the devil-hearted Spaniards of that day. 

Having the true state of affairs placed before him by 
the humane Dominican, " in the year 1510 the King of 
Spain ordered fifty slaves to be sent to Hispaniola to 
work in the gold mines." So says Herrera. That 
was the beginning of the systematic importation of 
Africans into the Spanish West Indies. On the whole, 
the Spanish-American slave-trade was, at its inception, 
in the interest of humanity, shocking as that asser- 
tion may seem at first glance. 

That the trade begun in 1510 did not reach our 
shores until 1619 is readily explained by the fact that 
our shores were not permanently settled by the whites 
until nearly a century after that first slave cargo was 
sent out. 

Of the Spanish slave-trade in that first century wr 



THE TEADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 15 

know little, nor are the facts necessary to the interest 
or the principles of this history, but we must not omit 
to record that Sir John Hawkins, the famous British 
navigator, made the first Anglo-Saxon venture in the 
trade in 1562. In his first voyage he descended on the 
coast of Africa, where he took, partly in trade and 
partly by violence, a cargo of slaves, of whom he 
sold three hundred in the West Indies, at a great 
profit. 

When Queen Elizabeth heard this story on his re- 
turn to England, she declared that " it would be de- 
testable and call down the vengeance of heaven upon 
the undertakers" if any more negroes were taken by 
violence ; but this opinion did not prevent Hawkins 
repeating the operation, nor did it keep Elizabeth from 
knighting him for his success. 

Of the trade in the seventeenth century we know 
more because our ancestors the English then entered 
it, and some of the documents relating to it have been 
preserved. The cultivation of sugar-cane, which was 
undertaken with success in Barbadoes in 1641, gave 
the first impulse to the slave-trade in the British West 
Indies, and in 1662, when the " company of Royal Ad- 
ventures Trading to Africa" was chartered by Charles 
II., the company bound itself to land three thousand 
negro slaves per year in the British West India 
islands. 

The Queen dowager and he who was to be James 
11. both held stock in this company. This company 
built some forts on the African coast, as good points 
for buying slaves, but in 1672 sold out to a new com- 
pany for £34,000. It had lost a large sum of money. 
And it is worth noting that this loss was due to the 



16 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

success of interloping owners of single ships who un- 
derstood the trade and knew the slave-coast and tlie 
West India market. Good people have supposed that 
a special interference of Divine providence ruined the 
company. 

The new company was called the Royal Assiento. 
It had bought out the old one, used guns on the out- 
side traders, but the private traders, " especially the 
American merchants," made such persistent appeals 
that Parliament was obliged to come to their relief. 

The company wanted to maintain a monopoly intact, 
and the English private trader wanted the monop- 
oly abolished. The keen Yankees suggested that " it 
would be a great benefit to the Kingdom to secure the 
trade by maintaining Forts and Castles there, with an 
equal duty upon all Goods exported." This com- 
promise was adopted. Parliament declared that the 
slave-trade was "highly Beneficial and Advantageous 
to this Kingdom, and to the Plantations and Colonies 
thereunto belonging," and then enacted that private 
ships should be free to enter the trade on the payment 
of ten per cent, duty on English goods exported to 
Africa. The tax money was used to maintain forts on 
.the African coast. 

Those who are familiar with American naval history 
will find especial interest in the above account for the 
reason that it was the first Yankee conflict for " Free 
Trade and Sailors' Rights." 

Then the British on both sides of the Atlantic reached 
out for the trade to the Spanish colonies, which Spain 
in those days farmed out to other countries. This 
was obtained by what is known as the Assiento Treaty 
of March 13, 1713. 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 1? 

Only tlie Royal company was named in the agree- 
ment, but all British traders were to participate in the 
trade. It was contracted on the part of the Spanish 
that they would take at least 4,800 negroes a year for 
thirty years, and that the company might sell as 
many more as it could for twenty-five years at any 
Spanish-American port except three. In return for 
this the company paid 200,000 crowns spot cash, 
a duty of 33^ crowns on each slave landed, and a 
quarter of its profits each to the Spanish and the 
British kings. 

This contract is found in Article 16 of the Treaty 
of Utrecht, which was signed on April 11, 1713. 
Although England obtained by this treaty the 
Hudson Bay Territory, Acadia, Newfoundland, and 
Gibraltar, this slave-trade article "was regarded as 
one of the greatest triumphs of the pacification of 

1713." . ^ 

At the time of this treaty London and Bristol were 
the slave-ship ports of England, and Newport was the 
chief one in America. Liverpool entered the slave 
trade previous to 1730, with "a single barque of thirty 

tons." 

The vessel had half the capacity of one of the sailing 
lighters common to New York Harbor. An Erie Canal 
boat carries two hundred and forty tons. But the 
little bark was profitable, and the trade grew after 
1731 until in 1752 Liverpool had eighty-seven vessels 
in the trade, Bristol one hundred and fifty-seven, and 
London one hundred and thirty-five. The Liverpool 
merchants built such sharp and swift ships for the 
trade that a special wet dock, that would keep them 
afloat during ebb tide while in that port, had to 

2 



13 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TKADE 

be built for them. The present great dock system 
of Liverpool originated in the needs of the slave- 
traders. 

In those days the ship-chandlers of Liverpool made 
special displays in their windows of such things as 
handcuffs, leg-shackles, iron collars, short and long 
chains, and furnaces and copper kettles designed for 
slavers' use. The newspapers were full of advertise- 
ments of slaves and slaver goods. " The young bloods 
of the town deemed it fine amusement to circulate 
handbills in which negro girls were offered for sale.'' 
An artist of wide repute — Stothard — painted "The 
voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West 
Indies." The Merchants' Exchange, or Town Hall, 
as it was called, was ornamented in a way that 
was strikingly appropriate, for "between the capi- 
tals runs an entablature or fillet, on which are 
placed in base-relief the busts of blackamoors and 
elephants, with the teeth of the latter, with such- 
like emblematical figures representing the African 
trade and commerce." The merchants of Liverpool 
needed no Ruskin to suggest "pendant purses" for 
decorating a frieze, or " pillars broad at the base, 
for the sticking of bills," when they were building 
a market-place. 

In America the New England colonies took the lead 
in the slave trade. Barefooted boys waded through 
the snow to find berths in the forecastles of the colony 
ships, and, hard as sailor life was then, they found 
more comforts afloat than on the farms they left be- 
hind. And once afloat the Yankee boy worked his 
way aft as readily as he climbed the ratlines when 
ordered to reef topsails. 



THE TRADE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS 19 

" At the very birth of foreign commerce from New 
England ports," says one writer,* " the African slave 
trade became a regular business." The Desire, as 
already mentioned, was a slaver. "The ships which 
took cargoes of staves and fish to Madeira and the 
Canaries were accustomed to touch on the coast of 
Guinea to trade for negroes, who were carried generally 
to Barbadoes, or the other English islands of the West 

Indies." 

The Massachusetts statute of 1705, which is curiously 
enough often quoted as showing that the people chere 
were opposed to the slave-trade, was carefully worded 
to promote the trade. It did, indeed, lay a tax of four 
pounds on each negro imported, but " a drawback was 
allowed upon exportation." "The harbors of New 
England were thus offered as a free exchange-mart for 

slavers." 

In Rhode Island "Governor Cranston, as early as 
1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hun- 
dred and three vessels were built in that State, all of 
which were trading to the West Indies and the South- 
ern colonies. They took out lumber and brought back 
molasses" in the direct trade, but "in most cases 
made a slave voyage in between." 

According to the "Reminiscences of Samuel Hop- 
kins," Rhode Island had one hundred and fifty vessels 
in the African slave-trade in 1770. Hopkins wrote in 
that year saying: "Rhode Island has been more 
deeply interested in the slave-trade, and has enslaved 
more Africans than any other colony in New Eng- 
land." 

In 1787 he wrote again: "This trade in human 

* History of Slavery in Massachusetts, by Geo. H. Moore. 



20 I'HE AMEfUCAxX SLAVE-TRADE 

species has been the first wheel of commerce in New- 
port, on which every other movement in business has 
depended. That town has been built up, and flour- 
ished in times past" on the slave-trade, "and by it 
[the inhabitants] have gotten most of their wealth 
and riches." 



CHAPTER II 

OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS 

David Lindsay as a Typical American Slaver of the Eighteenth 
Century— With a Rotten Ship that Showed Daylight 
Through Her Seams " Al Round Her Bow Under Deck " 
He Reached the Slave Coast, Gathered His Cargo in Spite 
of Fevers, Deaths in the Crew, and Competition, and Finally 
Landed at Barbadoes with "All m Helth and Fatt"— An 
Astrologer's Chart for a Slaver's Voyage— Tales of the 
Slaver Vikings of Liverpool— Debt of Early American 
Commerce to the Slave Trade— John Paul Jones a Slaver. 

Details of the characters of the men and of the 
ships that were engaged in the American slave-trade 
during the eighteenth century are lamentably hard to 
find in these days, but fortunately such as remain to 
us are sufficiently graphic and significant. 

For a type of the Yankee slavers of the day we may 
very well choose Captain David Lindsay, who hailed 
from Newport, R. L, in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, when that town was one of the liveliest of 
American ports. His story has been preserved in a 
considerable number of letters and documents that 
were printed in the American Historical Record some 

years ago. 

The earliest mention of Captain Lindsay's existence 
is found in a letter that comes literally from the sea— 
a letter that is dated ^' June ye 13 1740 at Sea Latt. 8^ 

21 



22 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

30' N. Long. 39° 30' W." It was written by one George 
Scott, himself a slaver captain, and it contains a vari- 
ety of matters of interest to the slave-trade in addition 
to the references to Captain Lindsay. It reads as 
follows : 

" Gentlemek : — Meeting with this opportunity I was very 
glad to acquaint you of our miserable voyage. We left 
Anamaboe ye 8th of May, with most of our people and slaves 
sick. We have lost 29 slaves. Our purchase was 129. My 
negro Bonner is ded ; the slaves we have left is now all re- 
covered. We have five that swell'd and how it will be with 
them I can't tell. We have one-third of dry cargo left, and 
two hhds. rum. If I had staid there for it and sold I believe 
I should have lost all our slaves. I think to proceed to 
Antigo and fit ye sloop and take ye other trial on the coast. 
It will not do to give up for one bad bout. If I go directly 
back I'll sell ye rum for gold, if I gitt but twenty pence for it 
before I'll by slaves. The slaves that died, I believe there was 
one above twenty-two years old and none under fourteen. I 
have sent by Captain Lindsay sixteen ounces of gold, which 
is all. I wrote you b^^ Capt. Kinnecutt, who sail'd ye 10th 
April. I have repented a hundred times ye bying of them 
dry goods. Had we laid out two thousand pound in rum 
bread and flour, it w^ould [have] purchased more in value than 
all our dry goods. I have paid a good part of the wages. 
My serviss to all friends, pray excuse all blunders, for I am 
now aboard Capt, Lindsay and in haste to gitt aboard." 

Observing, by the way, that Captain Scott was de- 
termined to "fit ye sloop and take ye other trial on the 
coast" — that he was a man of pluck himself — the ref- 
erences to Lindsay mean much to a sailor. 

Scott was more than a month out from the African 
coast and yet had covered but thirty degrees of west 
longitude. Then along comes a vessel, commanded by 



OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS 23 

Captain Lindsay, that is also bound west, and imme- 
diately Captain Scott not only writes a letter to the 
owners of his ship, which he gives to Lindsay to 
carry, but he also entrusts all the gold-dust he had 
obtained to the same hand. 

Manifestly Lindsay must have had a fast ship, and 
he was a man knowni to make quicker voyages, at 
least, than Scott. What is of equal importance, 
Lindsay must have had a reputation as an honest 
man. Our introduction to Lindsay, though it comes 
from an unknown slaver and out of the sea, is decid- 
edly in his favor. 

The next reference to Lindsay in these documents 
is in 1752, when he was in command of the brigantine 
Sanderson^ belonging to William Johnson, of New- 
port, R. L The register of the vessel has been pre- 
served, and reads in part : 

"The Brigantiue Sanderson, whereof David Lindsay is at 
present master, being a square stern'd vessel of the burthen 
of about forty tons, was built at Portsmouth, in the colony 
aforesaid, in the year Seventeen Hundred and Forty-live, and 
that this deponent at present is sole owner thereof, and that 
no Foreigner, directly or indirectly, hath any share or part 
or interest therein." William Johnson. 

Not only was she small — there are few, if any, of 
the Hudson River brick schooners that will not carry 
more cargo — she was a cheaply built vessel, as appears 
from another document which shows that during the 
year she was built she was offered for sale for £450, 
wdien the cost of building a first-class ship varied from 
£24 to £27 per ton register. 

Finding no sale for her she was kept going, and in 
the year 1752, with Lindsay in command, she went to 



24 TUE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

the West Indies for molasses, whence Lindsay wrote 
home that she was " tite as yett." She was probably 
still "tite" on her return to Newpoit, for she was at 
once loaded for Africa, where she arrived in due time, 
and it is then that we learn what kind of pluck Lind- 
say had. In a letter dated "Anamaboe 28th Feby 
1763" he says: 

" Gentlemen : — This third of mine to you and now I am to 
Lett you know my proceed'gs sense my last, Dated 3d Jan}', 
& I have Gott 13 or 14 hhds of rum yet Left abord, and God 
noes when I shall Gett clear of it. Ye traid is so dull it is 
actually a noof to make a man creasey. My cheefe mate after 
making four or five Trips in the boat was taken sick & Re- 
mains very bad yett : then I sent Mr. Taylor & he Gott not 
well & three more of ray men has been sick. James Dixon is 
not well now and wors than ji have wore out ray sraall cable 
also oakam & have been oblige to buy one heare, for I thought 
the concequance of yr Intrust on bord this vesiel was Two 
great to Rusk without a cable to trust, therefore I begg you 
not Blaim me in so doeing. I should be glad I cood come 
Rite home with ray slaves, for my vesiel will not last to pro- 
ceed farr. We can see daylight al round her bow under deck. 
However I hope She will carry me safe home once more. I 
need not in large. Heare lyes Captains hamlet, James Jepson, 
Carpenter, Butler lSg Lindsa3\ Gardner is dun. firginson is 
Gon to Leward. All these is Rum Ships, butler is in a brig 
with 150 hhds from Barbadoes, belongs to Cape Coast Castle. 
I've sent a Small boye to my wife. I conclude with my best 
Endeavors for Intrust. Gentlemen, your faithfid Servant at 
com'md " David Lindsay. 

" N. B, on the whole, I never had so much Trouble in all 
my voiges. I shall rite to barbadoes in a few daj's." 

Mr. Taylor was the second officer. Both first and 
second were in their bunks, and three of the men in 




BRINGING ONE THAT WAS BOUND AND GAGGED. 

See page 52. 



OLD-TIME SLAVEr, CAPTAINS AND TIIEIIi SHU'S 25 

the forecastle were sick. Terribly ^o^''^^;!* 
slaves in tlie hold likely to rise up and ^'."^e or free 
dom in case they learned this fact, and wi^h U^e p.ob 
ability that others of the crew would take the level, 
captain Lindsay found himself in a -rious strait i.u 
worse than all that, "he could see daylight al ronnd 

'ir;:Sf Lindsay came up from that fear^ 
.ome look at L open seams of his vesse and wen on 
loadin- her for the long voyage across the Atlantic 

If we will but look at the case in the light ot that 
d.v the coura-e, the fortitude, of the stout-hearted 
day tlie conui„e, -Wn^ „i,all we f ail to obsei-ve 

old skipper was inspiring. Nor shall we la 
his thonghtfnlness for the wife that would heai of the 
condition of the rotten ship with quaking fears. 

So is with a feeling of relief, and with increased 
ad!^ at on for his pluc\, that we find a letter which 
hoTs that he reached Barbadoes -^^^y ^.n- a -s 
perilous voyage; our admiration is all *egi eater 
because the perils are described so simply. The letter 
is as follows : 

.' BARBADOES, June 17th, N. S. 1753^ 
. G.KX..'. -.-These are to acqt of my ari^.1 ^-^ ^^^^^f 

.eels' Tune. My slaves is .o ^^ ^J^ ^_^^^,, ^^,, 
Maligabar pepper for owners. 



2(3 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

" Not to lularge, shall rite in a day or 2. We are all ^vell 
on bord. Mr. Sanford died the 3d day of March, & one John 
W^'ood who went in ye boat with him, died ye 3d of April, at 
sea. I left Capt. Hamblet at Cape Coast, sick. His slaves 
had rose & they lost the best of what they had. Heare is no 
slaves at market now." 

The reader wlio knows the sea will fully appreciate 
the condition of that tiny ship during those "22 daj's 
of very squally winds " — the tiny ship that was "open 
all Round her bows under deck." For she was short- 
handed through deaths and sickness, and yet her 
pumps had to be kept going during all that time, 
while several days were spent in repairing sails that 
the winds had blown to pieces. 

Nor does this letter tell us of fortitude alone, for it 
is a significant fact that Lindsay " lost one small gall " 
only, while all the rest were landed "in helth & fatt." 
They had been cared for in kindly fashion. The facts 
seems to show that Lindsay was superior to the average 
slaver of his day. It was then a lawful trade, and we 
have testimony that it was "very genteel." More 
important still, it was a trade that, more than all 
others, taxed the trading ability, the patience, the skill 
as a seaman and the fortitude of the men engaged in 
it ; also, it was, when successfully carried on, the most 
profitable branch of commerce. Naturally the most 
capable men of the sea were called to this trade. In 
short, Lindsay was a type of the race of Yankee 
slaver captains. 

With all these facts in mind it is amusing to turn 
to one other characteristic of this hard-headed old 
slaver. Before starting on this eventful voyage he 
must needs consult an astrologer, or conjurer, as the 



OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS 27 

seers of the time were often called, to learn the day 
and hour when the ship must sail in order to have all 




/7 '24'- 



the kindly influences of the heavenly bodies in her 
favor. Fortunately the chart which he obtained has 
been preserved, and we know from it that "D. L." 



L 



28 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

sailed "for Guinea at 11.32 o'clock on Aug. 22d, 
1752." 

Of the English captains engaged in the American 
trade there was Captain " Billy" Boates, also called 
" William Boates, Esq., whose extensive transactions 
in the commercial world rendered him a most useful 
member of society," to quote an obituary notice of 
the man from a Liverpool paper. Captain Boates was 
a waif. His mother or her friends cast him adrift in 
a Liverpool harbor boat a few hours after his birth. He 
was picked up, reared in an orphan asylum, appren- 
ticed to a ship master, and then began a career that 
show^ed the kind of stock from which he sprang. 
From the forecastle to the after-cabin required but 
three steps easily taken. From the cabin to the count- 
ing house was a step longer than the three preceding 
taken together ; but he made the leap. 

In the Knight he sailed from Anamaboe on Janu- 
uary 6, 1758, with three hundred and ninety-eight 
negroes, of whom, after a voyage that lasted less than 
six weeks, he landed three hundred and sixty at 
Jamaica. That was a voyage worth recording for its 
speed alone ; but off the Leeward Islands the Kniglit 
fell in with a French privateer that carried " twelve 
carriage guns and full of men, which attempted to 
board him several times." 

The odds against Captain "Billy" were tremen- 
dous, but what he lacked in men and arms he made 
up by his magnificent pluck. The privateersmen 
swarmed to his deck, "but never a Dago that got 
over the rail lived to return." 

More famous still as a fighter was Captain Hugh 
Crow, the one-eyed slaver of Liverpool, "one of the 



OLD-TIME SLAVER CAPTAINS AND THEIR SHIPS 29 

bravest, shrewdest, quaintest and most liumorous old 
sea-dogs that ever breathed" ; but he was of a later 
date than Lindsay or Boates, being, in fact, captain of 
the last lawful Liverpool slaver. One would like to 
tell his whole story, but space can be spared only to 
say that when in the slaver Mary he was attacked at 
night by two sloops-of-war, each of which was of far 
superior force. Captain Hugh supposed they were 
Frenchmen, and, calling his men to quarters, for six 
hours fought off the determined attacks of both men- 
o'-war. And then when daylight came he found they 
were British sloops at that. They had supposed that 
he was French. All things considered, that was the 
most splendid battle known to the history of "peace- 
ful commerce." 

Indeed as the most important branch of British com- 
merce — the commerce of the new England as well as 
the old England — the slave-trade became the chief 
nursery of British seamen. The instincts inherited 
from viking ancestors were fostered and encouraged 
there. It must be frankly admitted that not only did 
the boasted prosperity of both English and American 
over-sea commerce have its foundation in the slave- 
trade, but also that the magnificent qualities of the 
Anglo-Saxon naval seamen of the eighteenth century 
were nourished in the tiny traders, " of an average of 
seventy-five tons burthen" from Liverpool, of an 
average of forty tons from Newport and Boston, that 
went forth to face the unavoidable hurricanes of the 
tropical seas and to meet, yardarm to yardarm, the 
war-ships, privateers, and pirates that were ever on the 
lookout for such rich prizes as the slavers. The fact 
is the seamen who manned our ships in the War of the 



30 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Revolution, and by their pluck and skill captured the 
munitions of war that enabled Washington to win at 
last, were trained on the decks of slavers. And John 
Paul Jones, one of the " true sea-kings, whose claim 
to the title lies in the qualities of the head as well as 
of the heart," came through the forecastle of the 
slaver King George to hoist the first American naval 
ensign above the quarter-deck of the first American 
flag-ship. 



CHAPTER III 

WHEN VOYAGES WENT AWRY 

Tales of Trouble When Lying on the Slave Coast — " We are 
Ready to Devour One Another, for Our Case is Desprit " — 
A Second Mate's Unlucky Trip in a Long Boat — Sickness 
in the Hold as Well as Among the Crew — Cocoanuts and 
Oranges Could Not Serve in Place of Water — Story of the 
Mutiny on the Slaver Perfect— \(\sks the Underwriters As- 
sumed — The Proportion of Disastrous Voyages. 

"Anamaboe, October 27th, 1736. 
" Sir : After my Resjiects to you, these may Inform how it 
is with me at pres'ut. I bless God I lujoy my health very 
well as yett, but am like to have a long and trublesum voy- 
age of it, for there never was so much Rum on the Coast at 
one time before. Nor ye like of ye french ships was never 
seen before, for ye whole Coast is full of them, for my jaart 
I can give no guess when I shall get away, for I purchest but 
27 slaves since I have been here, for slaves is very scarce : we 
have had nineteen sails of us at one time in ye Rhoad, so tliat 
those ships that used to carry prjmie slaves off is now forsed 
to take anj' that comes : here is 7 sails of us Rum men that we 
are ready to devour one another, for our Case is Desprit. Sir, 
I beg that you will exist my famely in what they shall want, 
for I no not when I shall get home to them myself. I have 
had the misfortin to Bury my chefe mate on ye 21st of Sept. 
and one man more, and Lost the negro man Prymus and 
Adam over board on my pasedge, one three weeks after 
another : that makes me now very weke handed for out of 
what it left thair is two that is good for nothing. Capt, 

31 



32 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TIIADE 

Hamond has bin lieare six months aud has but GO slaves on 
bord. My hearty servis to your spouse and famely. I am 
y'rs to com'd " John Griffen." 

Before describing folly the evils inflicted on the 
slave cargoes it seems but an act of justice to give 
here some of the ills endured by the old-time slavers. 
We must consider the condition of the conscientious 
slaver captain when there were " 7 sails of us Rum 
men" in one port anxious to buy slaves — the slaver 
captain whose "Case is Desprit" — with such degree 
of sympathy as we can summon for his benefit, if we 
are to see the trade as it was. Captain Griffen was 
one of the Newport slavers. Very likely lie was in 
the trade when Captain Lindsay was making fame 
and wealth ; certainly everyone who knows the sea, 
and how the time drags while waiting for a cargo in 
an unhealthy, unattractive port, far from home, will 
sj^'mpathize with Captain Hammond, who had been on 
the slave-coast for six months and had less than half 
a cargo in his hold. 

Another letter from the captain, George Scott, al- 
ready quoted in connection with Captain Lindsay 
will show still more clearly how troubles came upon 
the slavers. The letter related to the voyage pre- 
viously mentioned, and it runs as follows : 

" Anamaboe, April ye 9th 1740 
"Brother Daniel, this I hope will find j-ou in good health 
1^ I am at present. I have not been very well for five weeks 
past, which is made our voyage very backward, and am now 
veij well recovered, Blessed be God. We have now five 
people sick and bonuer so bad he will not recover. I am 
heartily tired of ye voyage, everything runs so cross that I 
undertake to make a voyage. I being not very well, kept my 



^^EX VOYAGES WEXT A\YKY 33 

cheif mate aboard auil sent ye second mate in ye Long boat 
to Leward a trading. He had not been gone above four days 
before he hired a canoue, sends her up with his gold taken to 
me for goods, without any orders from me. i sent ye canoue 
immediately back without goods : going down they overset 
the canoue, the blacks came off from ye shore and took them 
up, put them in irons : the blacks where ye [long] boat lay 
detained ye mate ashore, in which time a man slave he had 
bought, got out ye boat with two ounces of gold and has got 
clean off. I was obliged to go down with ye sloop and pay 
thirty-two pound in ye best of goods before they would let ye 
mate come off. Upon the hole I've lost nigh three hundred 
pounds with that trip, in money, by the mate's folly. I am 
sure he will never be able to make satisfaction. 

" I bought some slaves and Goods from a Dutchman for 
gold, which I thought to sell to ye french, [but] in a little 
time after [that] my slaves was all taken with the flucks, so 
that I could not sell them ; lost three with it and have three 
more very bad : ye rest all well and good slaves. We have 
now aboard one hundred and no gold. I think to pui'chase 
about twenty & go off ye coast : ye time of year don't doe to 
tarry much longer. Everything of provisions is very dear and 
scarce : it costs for water Tenu shilling for one day. I think 
to stay in this place but fourteen days more. We shall go to 
Shama and water our vessel and sail off ye coast with what I 
can purchase, which I believe will be 120 slaves cargo. We 
shall have left about two hundred pound sterg. in goods, 
which wont sell here to any j)rofitt. Every man slave that we 
pay all Goods for here, costs twelve pound sterg. prime. I 
hope I shall be in Barbadoes, ye latter end of June, but have 
not concluded whither we shall go to Jamaica or Virginia ; 
our slaves is mostly large. 60 men and men boys, 20 women, 
the rest boys and girls, but three under four foot high. Pray 
excuse all blunders and bad writing, for I have not time to 
coppy, the sloop being under sail." 

One of the earliest of the voyages that went awry, 
of which a record has been preserved, was that of the 

3 



34 THE AMERICAjV SLAVE-TRADE 

Dutch West India Company's ship St. John, the log 
of which is given in O'Callagan's "Voyages of the 
Slavers." The troubles here vv^ere due to the parsi- 
mony of the owners — rather the directors of the com- 
pany — who fitted the ship out with rotten food and 
water casks that leaked. To take the place of water 
they took on 5,000 cocoanuts and 5,000 oranges, but 
the slaves died as cattle on the desert do, and at last, 
to complete the misery of all, the ship was stranded in 
a gale, and then looted by pirates. 

Another cause of loss to the slavers was in the mu- 
tiny, so-called, of the slaves. Although the negro was 
never for a moment to be compared with the North 
American Indian as a tighter, he did sometimes, even 
as a slave, rise against his oppressoi'. While the slaver 
Perfect, Captain Potter, was at Mana, on January 12, 
1759, with nearly one hundred slaves on board, the 
captain sent the mate, the second mate, and the boat- 
swain away for slaves that had been paid for. This 
expedition took more than half the Perfects crew 
away from her ; and while they were gone, the slaves 
in some way got clear of their manacles and swarmed 
up on deck. They killed the captain, the surgeon, the 
carpenter, the cooper and a boy, when six other mem- 
bers of the crew got into a boat and fled ashore to the 
mate, and thence to the slaver Spencer, Captain Daniel 
Cooke. 

Next morning Captain Cooke took his ship near the 
Perfect and " iired his guns into her for about an 
hour," but the Perfect's mate could not persuade him 
to board her. In the end such of the slaves as escaped 
the guns of the Spencer managed to run the Perfect 
ashore, where they plundered and burned her. 



WHEN VOYAGES WENT AWRY 35 

Of tlie troubles that came upon the slavers through 
the wars of the eighteenth century one might write a 
long and stirring chapter. For the slavers made good 
fighting, especially when it was viking blood in the 
slavers against Latin blood in naval ships. But 
of that nothing can be told here, because the losses 
were not an outgrowth of the slave-trade as a special 
branch of commerce. But something may be told of the 
proportion of losing to paying voyages, even though 
no list of slavers has been or can be made. In the old 
papers already mentioned in connection with Captain 
Lindsay, we find the cliarges of underwriters set forth, 
and no better comment on the risks of a trade can be 
found than an insurance policy. A paragraph from 
such a policy reads : 

" And touching the adventures and perils which we, 
the assurers are content to bear, and do take upon us 
in this voyage, they are of the seas, men of War, Fire, 
Enemies, Pyrates, Rovers, Thieves, Jettisons, Letters of 
Mart, and Countermart, Sarprizals, Taking at sea, Bar- 
atry of the Master, and Marines, and all the Perils, 
Losses, and Misfortunes that have or shall come to the 
hurt, Detriment or Damage of the said Goods and 
Merchandize, or of the said vessel, her Tackel, Apparel 
and Furniture, or any part thereof." 

For assuming these risks the underwriters charged 
usually £20 in a hundred, but Mr. William Johnson 
got at least one policy of a hundred for £18 premium. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SLAVER AND HER OUTFIT 

There were Tiny Ships in the Trade — One Vessel had a Ca- 
pacity of 5,000 Gallons of Molasses Only, and Even Open 
Row-Boats were used in the Nineteenth Century — Dimen- 
sions of a Slaver's Timbers — The Famous Ventis, a Fore- 
runner of the Yankee Clippers— Steamers that were in the 
Trade — The Blubber Kettles of Whalers used for Boiling 
Rice and Yams — Rum, Guns, and Coin were the Favorite 
Article'^ of Traffic, but Silks, Laces, Parasols and Other 
Goods for the Use of Women of Education and Delicate 
Tastes were Wanted— A Naval Officer's Estimate for a 
Slaver's Outfit. 

The Desire^ built at Marblehead, in 1636, was the 
earliest American slaver of which we have the size, and 
she, as already noted, was "a vessel of 120 tons." 
Another slaver of those days was the Oalc Tree, 
" Jansen Eykenboom, from Hoorn, master under 
God." In a charter-party dated "in the year of 
the birth of our Lord and Saviour the Lord Jesus 
Christ, 1659, the 25th of January," under wliich the 
Oak Tree was to "sail, with the first favourable wind 
and weather which God may vouchsafe, from the 
harbor [New York] direct toward the coast of Africa," 
the size of the ship is given : "In length 120 ft, in 
width 25^ ft, draft 11 ft, above the waterline 5 to 6 ft, 
with a poop deck." 

36 



TllE SLAYER AND HER OLTFIT 37 

The average New England slaver was niiicli smaller. 
The sloop Welcome that cleared from Newport for 
Barbadoes had a capacity of 5,000 gallons of mo- 
lasses. The Fame, a noted slaver and privateer of 
Newport, had a keel seventy-nine feet long. She was 
Just about as long on the water-line as the Newport- 
built defenders of the America's cup. Her beam was 
twenty-six and a half feet, which was about the width 
of the widest defender. 

The brigantine Sanderson, in which Captain David 
Lindsay made fame, carried 10,000 gallons of mo- 
lasses. 

A contract made by Caleb Clapp and Stephen 
Brown, who were ship-builders at " Warren, in the 
County of Bristole, in the colony of Rhode Island," 
in 1747, gives some interesting dimensions of a brigan- 
tine they had on the stocks. She was to be "sixty 
feet length of keel, straight rabbet, and length of 
rake forward to be fourteen feet, three foot and one- 
half of which to be put into the keel, so that she will 
then be sixty- three feet keel and eleven feet rake for- 
ward. Twenty-three feet by the beam, ten feet in the 
hold, and three feet ten inches betwixt decks, and 
twenty inches waste. Rake abaft to be according to 
the usual proportions, to have a sufficient false stern. 
Keel to be sided thirteen inches." 

A vessel of 600 tons would have, in these days, a 
keel no larger than tliat. The "betwixt decks" 
space is worth remembering, because the slaves were 
stowed there. 

In 1808 the trade was outlawed, while twelve years 
later it was declared piracy, and a few war-ships 
were sent out to suppress it. Two kinds of vsasels 



38 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

were used tliereafter. One kind included slender 
schooners built for speed ; the other kind included 
large ships, a few only of which were swift. The 
large ones were fitted out by men who meant to get 
rich at a single stroke. The small ones were used by 
men who found the trade congenial. These last would 
have been sneak- thieves in a criminal career ashore ; 
the others, highwaymen. 

We have definite figures regarding some of the ves- 
sels provided for the sneaking slavers, because some of 
them were captured and accurate measurements were 
made. In 1847 the I^elicidade, of sixty-seven tons; the 
Marla^ of thirty tons, and the Rio Bango^ of ten tons, 
were captured, all loaded with slaves in a manner to 
be described further on ; though it may be said here 
that the Maria^ a vessel, say, fifty feet long and six- 
teen wide, had two hundred and thirty-seven on board 
when taken. Some New York oj^ster sloops are larger 
than she was. 

The smaller vessels were built, in some cases, in such 
fashion that the crew could take down the masts and 
use oars. This gave them every advantage in escaping 
from the cruisers that must show sails above the hori- 
zon when ten miles or more away. 

Even the ten-ton schooner was not the limit. Open 
row-boats no more than twenty-four feet long by seven 
wide landed as many as thirty-five children in Brazil 
out of, say, fifty with which the vo3'age began. 

The finest ship of the large class was the Venus, a 
vessel of four hundred and sixty tons, built at Balti- 
more, at a cost of $30,000. So swift was this vessel 
that when cliased on the coast of Africa her captain 
actually shortened sail in order to play with the man- 



THE SLAVER AND HER OUTFIT 39 

o' -war, Tliere was notliing under sail that could equal 
her in her day. She landed over eight hundred slaves 
on her first voyage, with a net profit not far from three 
hundred dollars per head. 

A few steamers were known in the trade. The 
Promdencla in four voyages landed 4,500 slaves in 
Brazil. Another one called the Cacique is better 
known. She was originally the Tigress, belonging to 
a Captain Sanford, and was plying between New York 
and Stonington. Sanford sold her to a Brazilian mer- 
chant named Sexias for $11,500. Sexias spent $13,500 
in repairs and alterations. " In these transactions Mr. 
Gardner, an American resident in that city [New 
York], appears to have acted as agent, and he was 
looked upon then and afterward, by the Americans 
belonging to the vessel, as the consignee, and there is 
reason to believe he engaged in fitting out other steam 
vessels for the same purpose." 

The Cacique took on 1,000 slaves at Cabenda and 
could have made a safe voyage with these, but Sexias 
waited for the local agents to collect five hundred 
more and was captured by a British cruiser in conse- 
quence. 

The old whaler became a favorite slaver type, be- 
cause her try-pots could cook yams and rice as well 
as try oil, and her barrels carry either oil or water. 

One of the last and undoubtedly the most noted of 
the whaler-slavers was the bark Augusta, of New York. 
Gilbert H. Cooper testified, after the Augusta was 
seized, that he " purchased portions of the same vessel 
at the rate of $2,000 for the whole," and that he sold 
her to Appleton Oaksmith for $4,900, including $1,800 
worth of outfittings for the voyage, or $3,100 for the 



4-0 THE AMEIUCAN SLAYE-TRADi; 

ship alone — "which was $1,000 more than the [other] 
owners had authorized me to sell her for." 

As the eighteenth century passed away the improve- 
ments in merchant shipping, so far as improvements 
were made, were due chielly to the enterprise of slave- 
merchants, and at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century there was nothing afloat of their size that 
could overhaul the slavers that were turned into pri- 
vateers during the war of 1812. 

In the nineteenth centiuy the slave trade had rela- 
tively much less influence on shipping, but it is certain 
that the Vejius from Baltimore was the forerunner of 
the splendid Yankee clippers whose voyages previous 
to the Civil War astonished the maritime world. It is 
certain, too, that the building of small, swift schoon- 
ers enriched many a Yankee ship-yard owner in the 
years before our Civil War. If the sole end of 
government were the promotion of business inter- 
ests, then it might be said that those officials who 
winked at the doings of slavers served their country 
well. 

What goods were used in the slave-trade has been 
recorded in many official documents. Here is the bill 
of lading of the Sierra Leone, a Yankee slaver in the 
middle of the eighteenth century. 

"Shipped by the Grace of GOD in good Order and well 
conditioned, by William Joliuson & Co., owners of the said 
Schooner, called the Sierra Leone, whereof is master under 
God for this present voyage, David Lindsay, & now riding 
at Anchor in Harbour of Newport, & by God's grace bound 
for the Coast of Africa: To say," etc. The usual list of 
rum, food, and shackles follows, with "sixty musketts, six 
half barrels Powder " and so on, the bill ending at last with 



THE SLAVER AND HEK OUTFIT 4I 

these words: "xincl so God send the good Schooner to her 
desired Port in Safety. Amen." 

There is no reason to suppose that the invocations 
to the Deity were a mere vain following of custom. 
There is the record of "one good old elder, whose 
ventures on the coast had uniformly turned out 
well." He "always returned thanks on the Sunday 
following the arrival of a slaver in the harbor of New- 
port, that an overruling Providence has been pleased 
to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of be- 
nighted heathen, to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel dis- 
pensation." As the author of '' Examen de TEsclav- 
age en General," a French pro-slavery work, says: 
"Devotion was at that time the great occujDation in 
Europe ; and it was believed that Christians and sugar 
might easily be made at the same time." 

In 1801, when the prices on the slave-coast were at 
the highest, the following goods were given for one 
prime slave. The list is quoted from Gower Williams : 

•' One piece of chintz, 18 yards long ; one piece of baft, IS 
yards long ; one piece of chelloe, 18 yards long ; one piece of 
bandanoe ; seven handkerchiefs ; one piece of niccannee, 14 
yards long ; one piece of cushtae, 14 yards long ; three pieces 
of romalls ; forty-five handkerchiefs ; one large brass pan ; 
two muskets ; twenty-five kegs powder ; 100 flints ; two bags 
of shots ; twenty knives ; four iron pots ; four hats ; four 
caps ; four cutlasses ; six bunches beads ; fourteen gallons 
brandy." The total cost of the articles was £25. 

The captain of another slave-ship, writing in 1757, 
gives a list of his cargo as follows : 

"Have on bord 140 hhds. Rum for owners, 100 lbs, 
Provitions, 12 Thousand lbs. bread, six 4-pounders, 4 



42 THE A^IEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

swevles & 4 cowliorus [a Idnd of gun], small arms, 
&c." 

In the earliest days rum was the best article for the 
purchase of slaves. At the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tnry, when slaves were obtained chiefly by murderous 
raids, arms were of first consequence. And then when 
the slavers established great depots and barracoons on 
the slave-coast a time came when coin was wanted 
more than any other commodity. 

When Commodore M. C. Perry was in command of 
the African squadron he sent the following letter to 
Washington : 

United States Frigate Macedonian, 

At Sea, January 28, 1844. 

Goods suitable for the African trade, to comprise a cargo 
for a vessel of two hundred and fifty tons. 

40 hogsheads tobacco, long leaf and small head, Virginia. 
100 barrels powder, in 10 and 20 pound kegs. American 
cotton goods, consisting of furniture and apron checks, 
bleached and unbleached muslins, blue handkerchiefs, calicoes, 
blue drill, blue bafts or salempores, English dry goods, viz.. 
blue and white bafts satin strij^es, romanes, tomcoffees. 100 
barrels beef, pork and mackerel. 100 barrels flour, 25 barrels 
kiln-dried corumeal. 2,000 pounds refined sugar, 1,000 
pounds brown sugar, 20 kegs butter, 20 kegs lard, 20 boxes 
sperm candles, 50 boxes soap. 2,000 pounds hams, 1,000 
pounds sides and shoulders, 400 pounds beef tongues. 300 
pounds cheese, 20 boxes raisins, 50 barrels pilot and navy 
bread. Half dozen quarter casks of wine, madeira, port and 
sherry. Tea in two-pound caddies, young hj'son and gun- 
powder, 500 pounds coffee. Crocker^', consisting of C. C. 
wash basins, painted quart and pint mugs and jugs, say 100 
dozen of each. Tin pans, assorted sizes, say 50 dozen. Tin 
buckets with bales, four gallon size, 100 dozen. Wooden 
buckets, painted, say 25 dozen. Gentlemen's boots and shoes, 
100 pairs, assorted, principally large sizes. Ladies' shoes, 



THE SLAVER AND HER OUTFIT 43 

kid and prunelle, 100 pairs, assorted. Gentlemen's half hose, 
ladies' cotton stockings of good quality, 50 dozen each. 100 
dozen palm-leaf hats, assorted. Blank books, paper, ink and 
quills, in equal proportion, say $50 worth. 400 pounds 
white lead, 30 gallons paint oil, 30 gallons lamp oil. Brass 
kettles and pans, say 1,000 pounds, two-eighth kettles. 
About §,500 laid out in articles of good quality for ladies ; 
muslin, lace, insertion, silk gloss, silk stockings, small 
quantity of black silk, needles, pins, thread in spools and 
hanks, ribbons for bonnets, a few bonnets &c. 10 boxes good 
Spanish cigars in quarter boxes. If there be plenty of room, 
put in 500 feet of boards. 20 kegs of cut nails, assorted sizes, 
say 4, 6, 7, and 8 penny. 2 dozen silk and 5 dozen cotton 
umbrellas. A small quantity of ale, porter, and cider, the best 
quality, say 50 dozen each of ale and porter, and 25 of cider. 

Cutlasses and muskets are in demand for trade, but can be 
furnished much cheaper from England than from the United 
States. Those brought out are of an inferior quality. 

This list has been received from an authentic source, and 
is now forwarded to the Navy Department, by 
M. C. Perry, 

Commanding African Squadron. 

Note. — Whiskey, or rum, is a profitable article of traffic, but 
is purposely omitted in this list. 



CHAPTER V 

ON THE SLAVE-COAST 

Physical Features of Land and Sea — Peculiarities of the Abo- 
rigines and some Characteristics that were not Peculiar to 
Them — Gathering Slaves for the Market — A Trade that 
Degenerated from a System of Fair Barter into the Most 
Atrocious Forms of Piracy Conceivable — Utter Degrada- 
tion of White Traders — The Slaughter at Calabar — Prices 
Paid for Slaves — The Barracoons of Pedro Blanco and Da 
Souza — When Negroes Voluntarily Sold Themselves. 

The chief source of supply for tlie devouring slave- 
market of the West throughout the wiiole history of 
the trade, and practically the only source during the 
years when the trade was legal, was found along the 
Atlantic coast of Africa, between Cape Verde, at 
the north, and Benguela, or Cape St. Martha, at the 
south. The sea here makes a great scoop into the land, 
as if the Brazilian part of the South American con- 
tinent liad been broken out of the hollow in the Afri- 
can coast. Two great rivers and a host of smaller 
streams come down to the sea within its limits, and 
its contour, as a whole, is that of a miglit}^ gidf, but 
there is neither. bay nor inlet throughout its whole 
extent that forms a good harbor for shipping. And 
the off-shore islands, too, are few in number and small 
in extent. The land at the beach is almost every- 
where low, even though hills and mountains may be 

44 



ON THE SL AYE-CO A ST 45 

seen, Hooded with a dreamy haze, in the distance. 
The rivers wind about through uncounted channels in 
low delta lands covered with masses of mangrove and 
palm trees, and haunted by poisonous and vicious 
reptiles. The yellowish sand of the sea and the black 
washings of the uplands mingle to form low, tawny 
beaches and dunes where the river currents are beaten 
back by the ever-present and ever-treacherous surf. 
Goree and Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Bight 
of Benin and the Bight of Biafra, Bonny and Calabar, 
Anamaboe and Ambriz, the Congo and St. Paul de 
Loango, are all familiar names to the student of slave- 
coast literature. 

Here as elsewhere in the primitive life of man the 
strong dominated the weak — there were tribes that 
were superior, mentally and physically, to their neigh- 
bors, and in every tribe there were men who arose above 
the masses, while among these stalwarts there was a 
chief who was in every case a real hero to his people. 
The sons of the chiefs or kings did, indeed, inherit the 
commanding positions of their fathers, but only when 
it was shown in them that the blood had not degen- 
erated. In some tribes there was no inheritance of 
the chiefs office. 

It was a superstitious as well as a savage people, 
believing in the existence of invisible supernatural 
beings of various kinds, but because of the destruc- 
tive influence of the unexplainable phenomena of 
nature round about, they regarded nearly all of these 
spirits as having malevolent minds. From the light- 
ning's stroke to the insidious spread of a tumor, no ill 
of life occurred that was not the work of a malignant 
spirit. 



46 THE AMEEICAX SLAVE-TRADE 

In a way not hard to understand, these savages con- 
nected the spirits with the evil creatures of the earth 
— with the poisonous serpents, the fierce robber birds, 
the ravenous beasts, and with those human individuals 
in whom cunning and stealth took the place of courage 
and physical prowess. Even the rocks, when of un- 
usual form, and especially when of terrifying aspect, 
were regarded as the abiding places of evil spirits, and 
not infrequently as their visible bodies. 

With all they had a crude knowledge of what, in 
works on political economy, is treated under the head 
of "exchanges." The savage, of course, had made 
but slight progress in the practical arts, while the 
white men understood the results of accumulation 
as well as of exchange. 

In one other matter the savage and the civilized 
man found themselves on common ground, though 
that is not to say exactly on a level. They both 
loved rum. The white man mixed his rum with 
juice of limes and water and sugar. The savage 
always took (and takes) his "straight." The white 
man of those days, too, preferred madeira wine 
when he could afford it, which he could do after 
one voyage to Africa. Moreover the white man 
drank it for his health, or for some other reason of 
that kind, while the savage took it because he liked 
it. The relative levels of the two races are herein 
manifest. 

Because the white men were superior in a variety of 
ways the black men received them with joy, and 
opened traffic at once. 

It was a grewsome traffic that followed— the most 
grewsome in the history of the world— for the white 



. ox THE SLAVE-COAST 47 

men came seeking slaves and the blacks had them to 
sell. 

It is a curious subject of inquiry, when we come to 
consider how the African chiefs happened to have slaves 
for sale. That slaves were few in number during the 
earlier years of the trade is certain. That is to say, 
the great men of every tribe held a few of their neigh- 
bors as personal property. They were detained in 
various ways, but chiefly through taking prisoners in 
the fights with neighboring tribes, for strange as it 
may seem now, the presence of slaves in a tribe indi- 
cated some degree of mercy in the minds of the slave- 
owners. Instead of killing everybody, old and young, 
when attacking an enemy, these slave-owners saved 
some alive. 

One other way was through the tribal laws regard- 
ing debts. The civilized people threw the insolvent 
debtor into prison and held him there, very fre- 
quently, until he died — sometimes while he starved 
to death. The black savages made the debtor work 
out the debt. It was also noted by the whites that 
when a negro husband found one of his wives unfaith- 
ful he made a slave of her lover. 

More remarkable still was another source of slave- 
owning among the Africans. So jealous were they 
of their right to worship their gods when, where, 
and how they pleased, that for a man to desecrate 
or remove a neighbor's fetish, or even to touch 
it, was an offence for which the penalty was often 
slavery. 

War, crime, and superstition supplied the great 
men of the tribes with servants, and these they would 
sell on occasion. That they might also sell wives and 



48 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

children scarcely need be said, tliougli sons were rarely- 
sold save in time of famine, even in tlie mild slave- 
holding days before the white slaver came — days when 
slaves were, on the whole, treated as members of the 
slave-holder's family. In connection with these facts 
we must remember that the Africans, having food and 
raiment, were therewith content. They did not try to 
accumulate fortunes, and so had no need for many 
workmen. Slaves were few in number on this coast 
before the white man came. 

The story of the first American voyage to Africa of 
which we have a definite record tells us somewhat of 
methods employed in obtaining slave cargoes. A 
Boston ship, called the Rainboioe, commanded by 
one Captain Smith, went away to Madeira with salt- 
fish and staves. Sailing thence with the proceeds of 
her sale, she "touched on the coast of Guinea" for 
slaves. She found some London slave-vessels already 
here, with their captains very much disgruntled be- 
cause trade w^as dull. There were very few slaves for 
sale, that is, and to liven matters a little, the Yankees 
and the Londoners united, and " on pretence of some 
quarrel with the natives landed a 'murderer' — the ex- 
pressive name of a small cannon— attacked a negro 
village on Sunday, killed many of the inhabitants, 
and made a few prisoners, two of whom fell to the 
share of the Boston ship." 

That was in 1645 — just twenty-six years after the 
Dutchman landed the slaves in Virginia as recorded 
by John llolfe, the first American squaw-man. False 
pretence, outrage, and the slaughter of innocents 
characterized the first-recorded gathering of slaves in 
which an American had part. They "killed mnny of 




AFTER A RAID. 

See page 56. 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 49 

the inhabitants," and got two slaves for their share of 
the plunder. 

That Captain Smith's act was not according to the 
ordinary usages of the trade may be inferred from 
what happened when he returned to Boston. A 
quarrel with the ship's owners over the proceeds of 
the voyage resulted in a lawsuit. The story of the 
voyage was told in court, and although it was not a 
criminal trial, one of the magistrates "charged the 
master with a threefold offence— murder, man-steal- 
ing, and Sabbath-breaking." Tlie captain escaped 
punishment on these charges, on the ground that the 
court had no jurisdiction over crimes committed in 
Africa, a decision that was typical of what was to 
come. But the two slaves were returned home. 

On the other hand, when we consider the usual 
course of trade, we may say that, viewed fairly and 
by the light of the age, the gathering of slaves on the 
coast of Africa, previous to 1750, was conducted with 
as great a regard for honesty as was any other trade 
with uncivilized people. 

The voyage to the coast in the Newport slaver 
days lasted anywhere from six to ten weeks, accord- 
ing to the ship and the luck in winds. On reaching 
Bonnj^, or Anamaboe, or Old Calabar, then favorite 
ports, the captain made ready for a grand entertain- 
ment in honor of the native chiefs and headmen. To 
put it bluntly, the chiefs were invited on board to get 
drunk, and they accepted the invitation with an eager 
thirst. 

In addition to this free debauch the chiefs received 
dundry presents. According to Alexander Falcon- 
bridge, a surgeon in the trade in the latter half of the 
4 



50 THE AJIERICAX SLAVE-TRADE 

eighteenth century, the presents "generally consist of 
pieces of cloth, cotton, chintz, silk handkerchiefs, and 
other India goods, and sometimes brandy, wine, or 
beer." 

Having propitiated the chiefs, the captain was free 
to begin trade. Some inkling of how this was con- 
ducted is told in the letter of Captain George Scott 
in the chapter " When Voyages Went Awry." 

It w^as disheartening and even exasperating to the 
slavers, and the more enterprising made ways of liven- 
ing the trade. They looked for a chief who held a 
grudge against a native tribe, and incited and aided 
him to take revenge. They suggested to chiefs that 
certain stout, well-built citizens of the tribe were am- 
bitious of becoming rulers and that an effectual stop 
to such ambition was to sell the offenders. They made 
friends with the fetish or medicine men— always the 
adroit and underhand rascals of the tribe — in order to 
have charges of witchcraft preferred against likely 
young men and women. They persuaded the medicine 
men to have yoaths and children entrapped without 
any charge of any kind. They told men having many 
wives that this or that 3'oung man was the lover of 
one or another wife. So the great man was led to 
lie in wait and capture the lover and sell him. It was 
a short step from this Fo another practice whereby at- 
tractive wives were sent to entrap unwary amorous 
swains. "" Incredible as it must seem, the civilized cap- 
tains from Christian lands introduced what is known 
to professional thieves as the badger game, and they 
made money out of it, and the ship merchants and 
stockholders in the ships knew that it was done and 
willingl}' shared the profits. 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 61 

But a worse state of affairs was to come. That 
there was a steady growth in the number of ships in 
the trade has already been noted. The cause of the 
rapid increase in the number and capacity of the 
slavers during the middle years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury is not far to seek. The planters of the Wt^st 
Indies had found it more profitable to work slaves to 
death, while yet in the prime of life, than to support 
them in an idle old age. The loss of hands could be 
readily replaced by importations from Africa, and 
there was nothing in the civilization of that age to 
make the planters consider any other question in the 
matter than that of making profits. 

The prices of slaves rose steadily under this increas- 
ing demand. Captain Lindsay, in the voyage that 
was "anoof to make a man creasey," sold his prime 
slaves for £35 each. Twenty-five years later the price 
received averaged £70, and the Liverpool ship Enter- 
prise, belonging to T. Leyland & Co., in a voyage 
made about the first of the present century, cleared 
£24,430 85. lid. on a cargo of three hundred and 
ninety -two slaves, or more than £62 per head, old and 
young all counted in. 

The result was an activity, well called " feverish," 
in the market on the African coast. The price of a 
slave there, according to a Newport record dated 1762, 
was one hundred and ten gallons of rum. An old 
commercial history of Liverpool records that in 1786 
the average cost of delivering a slave in the West In- 
dies was £27 5s. lOcL, of which perhaps £22 was the 
price paid for the slave. With the first jumps in the 
price came a change in the methods of obtaining car- 
goes. The dribbling supply that had worried Captain 



g2 THE AMERICAN' SLAVE-TEADE 

Lindsay, who was satisfied with a cargo of but fifty- 
six, was wholly inadequate to the growing de- 
mand. 

The first change in the trade was relatively a mild 
one. Slavers had never been very scrupulous about 
the title which a seller claimed when a slave was of- 
fered, but there are cases on record where slavers re- 
fused to buy when it was learned that men offered as 
slaves were really free and had been kidnapped. 
When the demand became eager, after 1750, the cap- 
tains let it be known that every soul offered, if phys- 
ically sound, would be taken and no questions asked. 
Slaves, too, had been purchased almost exclusively 
of chiefs and headmen, and it had been a daylight 
trade. Now anybod}^ might bring a slave at any 
time of the night and get a good price for him. 

Straightway the people of the coast who, in the or- 
dinary course of their lives would never have owned 
a slave, began bringing slaves to the ships. Two or 
three would paddle off in a canoe at night, bringing 
one that was bound and gagged, and the purchase of 
those who were manifestly kidnapped became the 
regular custom of the trade. Alexander Falconbridge, 
the slaver surgeon already quoted, said that in his 
time (during the latter part of the century) the ma- 
jority of the slaves with whom he talked had been 
kidnapped. He gave man}^ instances of which he had 
personal knowledge, by way of illustration. A wo- 
man was invited by a neighbor to come in for a visit 
one evening. As soon as she entered the hut two men 
in waiting bound her and carried her on board ship. 
A father and his son, while planting yams, were 
seized by men who came from the brush. A man 




ON THE SLAVE-COAST 

from the interior liaving brought some product to the 
beach for sale was asked to visit the ship lying off 
shore and get a free drink of rum. He went, but 
when there found that his guide had sold him, and 
stay he must. 

James Town, a ship carpenter, in the Parliamentary 
inquiry, testified that he saw a dealer sell a slave on 
board a ship, in the Gallinas, but when the dealer 
paddled to the beach with his goods, four men came 
from the brush, seized him, robbed him of his goods 
and then carried him, in his own canoe, to the slave- 
ship, where they sold him to the captain, who had 
seen the whole doings. 

"While the British slaver Briton was lying in the 
Benin River a native chief known as Captain Lemma 
came on board to get the usual presents. A few min- 
utes later a canoe with three negroes was seen crossins: 
the river, and the chief sent his followers to bring it to 
the ship. The three proved to be members of another 
tribe than the chiefs, and they were at once offered for 
sale. Two were purchased, but the third, an elderly 
man, was ref nsed as unsalable. At that the old man 
was taken over the rail and there his head was 
cut off. 

Off Piccaninni Sestus, on the windward coast, in 
1769, Mr. William Dove saw a noted native slaver 
named Ben Johnson bring off a girl he had stolen. 
Just as Johnson Avas leaving the ship on one side two 
very excited men came to the other to inquire about 
the girl. On learning her fate they went in chase of 
Johnson, captured him, and, bringing him to the ship, 
offered him for sale. 

"You won't buy me, whom you know to be a great 



54 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

trading man, will you, captain?" said Johnson, in 
remonstrance. 

"If they will sell you I will buy you, be you what 
you may," replied the captain, and the kidnapping Ben 
Johnson became a slave himself. This story is espe- 
cially interesting because of the picture it gives of the 
workings of the captain's mind. He would not kidnap 
a negro himself, but he would buy of anyone under 
any circumstances. 

A man named Marsh, who was in charge of a shore 
station established for buying slaves at Cape Coast 
Castle, in those daj^s, is on record as saying: "I do 
not mind how they get them, for I buy them fairly." 
It is a queer exhibition of conscientious scruples, 
though one, perhaps, not now wholly unknown. 

But the slavers rapidly outgrew such squeamishness. 
They outgrew it simply because the increased numbers 
obtained by such methods were still inadequate for 
the demand. Moreover with the increase in the num- 
ber in an average cargo came a special need for haste 
in procuring them. Captain Lindsay might keep forty 
negroes "in helth and fatt" under the deck of the 
Sanderson while gathering fifteen or twenty more by 
the old slow process, but when Captain Billy Boates, 
of Liverpool, a noted slaver, who was " born a beggar 
to die a lord," had two hundred and fifty on board 
the ship KnigM, in which he won fame, he could not 
wait long for the remaining hundred because those 
already on board would die. 

The trade in its origin had been an exchange of a 
fair measure of goods for individuals legally held 
as slaves. It arrived at a stage in which a majority 
of every cargo purchased consisted of freemen kid- 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 55 

napped as individuals. The next step down in- 
volved a resort to piracy — to deliberate attacks on 
natives who refused to trade. It will be remembered 
that the Massachusetts slaver had been a pirate in this 
fashion as early as 1645. Such acts were too common 
throughout the traffic, but what is to be emjDhasized 
here is that piratical acts naturally increased in num- 
ber as the demand for slaves increased. 

Following bloody quarrels with the coast tribes 
came the practice of inciting the coast tribes to make 
piratical raids on the interior. 

It is likely that the practice of inciting these raids 
began as early as 1757 — perhaps earlier, in a desultory 
way. At any rate, in a letter already quoted "six 
four-pounders, four swevles, and four cow-horns" 
were among the goods carried out for trade. But it is 
certain that raiding was not then the usual course of 
trade. 

Mr. John Bowman, who was employed at the slave 
coast just previous to 1776, testified before the Com- 
mittee of Parliament that he had had charge of an 
agency established on the Scassus River for supplying 
the warlike natives with arms for raids, and that he 
accompanied the raiders on one expedition. Coming 
to the agency the chief obtained a supply of guns and 
ammunition. Then the trumpets were sounded, a band 
of men was collected, the arms were distributed, and 
the start was made immediately. Late in the after- 
noon the band camped near a branch of the Scassus 
and waited until midnight. Then, leaving Bowman, 
whose heart had failed him, they crept away through 
the forest. A half hour later shouts and screams were 
heard and the forest was lighted up by the flames of 



5g THE A.AIERICAN SLAVE-TIIADE 

burning huts. Later still the band returned, bringing 
thirty men, women, and children. A small village 
had been attacked when all its people were asleep. 
Some were killed and some escaped to the brush, 
the thh-ty captives being taken alive and unhurt. 
These were bound securely, and when da}^ came they 
were carried down to the agency. 

This is one of the mildest stories of a raid known to 
the histor}^ of the trade. 

Captain Canot, in describing the work of a raiding 
party, says : 

"In my wanderings in Africa I have often seen the 
tiger pounce upon its prey, and with instinctive thirst 
satiate its appetite for blood and abandon the drained 
corpse ; but these African negresses [who were of the 
raiding party] were neither as decent nor as merciful 
as the beast of the wilderness. Their malignant 
pleasure seemed to consist in the invention of tortures 
that would agonize but not slay. A slow, lingering, 
tormenting mutilation was practised on the living 
. . . and in every instance the brutality of the 
women exceeded that of the men. I cannot picture 
their hellish Joy . . . while the queen of the har- 
pies crept amid the butchery gathering the brains 
from each severed skull as a honiie houclie for the ap- 
proaching feast.'' 

As for the defeated negroes who were not killed, 
they were carried down to the sea and sold. And as 
time passed the passion for blood gi-ew on the raiders 
until it was greater than their greed. They tortured 
to death many whom they might have sold. Before 
tlie end of the eighteenth century these raids, called 
wars by those who owned the slave-ships, were the 



; ON THE SLAVE-COAST 57 

chief source of supply for the coast market, and after 
tiie trade was declared illegal they were, practically, 
the only source of supply ; and the people of the 
United States knew that it was so. 

There were many little tribes and settlements on 
the rivers in the old days wherein the natives were 
chiefly devoted to agriculture, and these were the 
prey of the coast pirates until the rivers were swept 
clean of all peace-loving inhabitants, and the whole 
population surviving was turned into ravaging pirate 
hands. 

Said an eloquent coast chief when the English be- 
gan to negotiate with him for the abolition of the 
slave traffic : 

"I and my army are ready, at all times, to fight the 
enemies of England, and do anything the English 
may ask of me, except to give up the slave-trade. 
No other trade is known to my people. It is the 
source of their glory and wealth. Their songs cele- 
brate their victories, and the mother lulls the child to 
sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to 
slavery." 

Still another view of the efi'ect of the growing de- 
mand for slaves is to be given. "Treat men as pawns 
and nine-pins and you shall suffer as well as they." 
It is chiefly because of the effect of the trade on those 
engaged in it, directly or indirectly, that their history 
is of present interest. 

From furnishing arms to raiders and otherwise in- 
citing them to the work, the white slavers at an early 
day descended far enough to take part in the bloody 
deeds. Even Anglo-Saxon slavers — members of the 
only race that in these days does really understand 



58 THE AMEEICAX SLAVE-TKADE 

the meaning of the words justice and liberty — were 
found ready to pose as peacemakers for the purpose 
of betraying one band of negroes into the hands of 
another, and of themselves beginning tlie bloody 
slaughter that followed. 

The Calabar (or Kalaba) River empties into the 
Bight of Biafra — right at the angle formed by the 
coast lines of the huge gulf already mentioned. It is 
a stream about three miles wide, with from three to 
five fathoms of water. The banks are low and cov^ered 
with mangrove brush and palm-trees. Numerous 
lagoons are found on both sides of the stream, and 
the apparent banks are but a succession of islands. 

On one of these islands w^as a settlement known as 
Old Calabar, or the Old Town. On another was a set- 
tlement called New Town. The people of the two 
settlements w^ere of one blood, but they hated each 
other intensely because of the rivalry growing out of 
the slave trade. Yet so nearly balanced w^ere they 
in forces that only by kidnapping and an occasional 
murder of an individual or two could one inflict 
injury on the other. However, as time went on the 
New Town people became somewhat the stronger 
through favor of the slave captains, and then came 
the crowning infamy of the trade in that age. 

It was in the year 17G7. The ships Indian Queen^ 
DuTce of Yorlc, Nancy, and Concord, of Bristol ; the 
Edgar, of Liverpool and the Canterbury, of Lon- 
don, were lying in the river between the two towns. 
Trade was dull, and the captains of these ships got 
together to devise a plan to liven it by taking advan- 
tage of the jealousy between the two townis, and the 
somewhat sui)erior force of New Town. After brief 



. ox THE SLAYE-CO-VST 59 

consultation it was agreed that they should, on the 
pretence of making peace between the two towns, 
invite the Old Town people to come unarmed to the 
ships for a palaver. Accordingly messages were sent 
to the chief, Ephraim Robin Jolin, his brother, Amboe, 
and some other headmen, requesting all the men of 
the town to come to the ships on a certain day, and 
promising unlimited free rum to mellow the hearts of 
the obdurate before the peace terms were arranged. 
The captains, of course, pledged their honor to protect 
the Old Town people from all danger during the 
palaver, and a safe return ashore. 

Knowing their inferiority in fighting force, the Old 
Calabar people very gladly accepted the offer of these 
ship-captains to arrange for peace, and tlie appointed 
day came on with much jubilation in Old Calabar. 
For some reason not given Chief Ephraim did not go 
off to the banquet, but he sent one of his wives as a 
present to the Chief of New Town ; and three of his 
brothers, of whom Amboe was the oldest, went in one 
canoe along with twenty-seven other men, while nine 
other canoes, none of which was smaller than this, 
followed. 

The first ship visited was the Indian Queen^ where a 
seemingly hearty welcome was extended. From the 
Indian Queen the leading canoe was sent to the Edgar 
and thence to the DiCke of York, an abundance of rum 
being supplied at each ship. Some of the canoes fol- 
lowed the leader, and others distributed themselves 
among the other ships, where the greater number of 
their crews went on board and were received with 
lavish presents of rum. 

The effect of the liquor was soon apparent in the 



60 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

sleepy actions of the drinkers, and the moment for the 
iinal stroke of the conspiracy was at hand- While 
Amboe Robin John and his two brothers were sitting 
in the cabin of the Duke of Yorlc her officers and crew 
suddenl}'' dropped the rum-cups, and, taking up mus- 
kets, cutlasses, and boarding-pikes, that had been 
placed read}'' for the occasion, they attacked the unsus- 
pecting and unarmed negroes. 

A wild dash for life was made. The three brothers 
strove to get out of the cabin-windows, but were 
hauled in and ironed. On deck the negroes who strove 
to resist were cut down, and those who fled for the rail 
were tripped or slashed or stabbed or shot, as the case 
might be. Even the canoes alongside were fired on 
and sunk with all who happened to be in them, when 
some were drowned, some were dragged on board, and 
a few went swimming for the shore. 

The noise of the conflict on the Diike of York was a 
signal to the other ships, on most of which the natives 
were attacked in like manner. And then came the 
inhabitants of the New Town ; for the slaver captains 
had arranged that they should hide in the man- 
groves along shore until the attack was made, when 
they were to come out with canoes and pick up the Old 
Town people who might be swimming for the shore. 
And these, being mad with their thirst for blood, 
killed more than they took out of the water for slaves. 
In all more than three hundred of the Old Town people 
were killed or enslaved in the course of this raid 
planned by the white men. 

But the end of the story is not yet told. Having 
killed or captured the last man in the water, the New 
Town people paddled to the ships to receive their re- 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 61 

ward for their share in the onslaught. This reward 
was collected, of course, in the shape of a liberal price 
for each captured Old Town man, with free drinks 
added, although of the drinks they were naturally a 
little shy under the circumstances. But at the side of 
the Diike of YorTc, one other reward was wanted — the 
head of their chief enemy among the captured Old 
Town people — the head of Amboe Kobin John. But 
knowing that the captain of the Duke of York cared 
nothing for their thirst for blood — knowing that he had 
joined in the raid solely for the profit there was in it — 
the chief of New Town, who was known as Willy 
Honesty, said : 

*' Captain, if you will give me that man, to cut his 
head off, I will give you the best man in my canoe, 
and you shall be slaved first ship." 

At that Amboe, who could speak English, bowed his 
head and, putting his hands together in the attitude of 
prayer, begged the captain of the ship to retain him 
on board. But the captain forced him, his guest 
under a ^solemn promise of protection, over the rail, 
where his head was struck off, and his body thrown to 
the sharks. 

As a result of their treachery and murder, the slaver 
captains received from twenty-five to thirty slaves 
each, of whom a third, perhaps, were captured in 
the water, and had to be purchased of the New Town 
people. 

The two brothers of Amboe Robin John were sold in 
the West Indies, but managed to escape to Virginia, 
and thence to Bristol, "where the captain who had 
brought them, fearing he had done wrong, meditated 
carrying them back." But before he could sail with 



Q2 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

them, a shipper in the oil, ivory, and gold-dust trade, 
who had heard the story of the massacre, took them 
before a court on a writ of habeas corpus, when they 
were declared free and were sent home to Old Calabar. 
Through this means Clarkson, the famous abolitionist, 
got the authenticated story, and used it with tre- 
mendous effect in his crusade against the trade. It 
was not in the Anglo-Saxon heart to approve such 
doings, even in the eighteenth century. 

Time had been when the long and dangerous voyage 
had made vikings of those engaged in it, but as the 
profits grew and swelled before the eyes of the slavers 
all other views were fogged from sight, and from brave 
men, really striving to do right, they were, within half 
a century, degraded to a level beyond which there was 
no depth conceivable. And degradation is the inevi- 
table fate of everyone who deliberately ignores justice 
in his treatment of inferiors. Get rich he may, but be 
degraded hell-low he shall be. 

How the degradation of the slaver's deck was con- 
tagious ; how it spread to the owners of the ships ; 
how these owners, while posing as Christians, became, 
through inciting such acts, worse than the captains 
who participated actively in the infamies ; how com- 
munities and nations were thus made rotten, until at 
last the greatest slave nation of them all regained 
health by the most frightful of modern wars, can only 
be suggested here. 

After the end of the eighteenth century the only no- 
table change in the methods of gathering slaves for 
market was in the establishing of barracoons — that is, 
what a cowboy might call corrals— in which to herd 
the slaves awaiting shipment. The trade having 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 63 

been outlawed, cruisers were stationed on the African 
coast to stop the work of the slavers. The slave-ships 
then had need of such quick despatch as had never 
been dreamed of before. They came to the coast, 
usually, disguised as honest traders, and watching for 
a day when the coast was clear they got their slaves 
quickly on board and sailed away. To enable a ship 
to load quickly, depots were established at conven- 
ient points, where pens w^ere built by setting tree- 
trunks into the ground to make a high fence. In 
these the slaves were held by the hundred — sometimes 
more than a thousand were imprisoned in one pen — to 
await the arrival of a ship. 

Captain Philip Drake, an English slaver, w^hose 
diary was printed in New York about forty years ago 
under the title of "Revelations of a Slave-Smuggler," 
describes incidentally two of the most noted of these 
slave stations — that of Don Pedro Blanco, on the Gal- 
linas River, and that of Da Souza, at Whydah. 
'*Gallinas," he says, "was a depot and market for 
slaves brought from all streams that penetrated the 
Guinea Coast, as well as territory further south. The 
river w^as full of small islands ; and on several of 
these, near the sea, as well as on the banks, were lo- 
cated factories, barracoons, dwelling-houses, and store- 
houses. The success of Blanco had attracted a dozen 
other traders, and the Don was a prince among them. 
In African fashion he supported a harem, and quite a 
retinue of house servants, guards, etc., besides clerks 
and overseers of his barracoons." 

Captain Canot describes Blanco's headquarters in 
greater detail. He says : 

" About a mile from the river's mouth we found a 



g^ THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

-roup of islets on each of whicli was erected the fac- 
tory of some particuhir slave-merchant belonging to 
the -rand confederacy. Blanco's establishments were 
on several of these marshy flats. On one, near the 
mouth, he had his place of business or trade with 
foreign vessels, presided over by his principal clerk, 
an astute and clever gentleman. On another island, 
more remote, was his residence, where a sister, for a 
while, shared with Don Pedro his solitary home. 
Here this man of education and refined address sur- 
rounded himself with every luxury that could be 
purchased in Europe or the Indies, and dwelt in 
a sort of Oriental but semi-barbarous splendor. Fur- 
ther inland was another islet, devoted to his seraglio 
within whose recesses each of his favorites inhabited 
her separate establishment after the fashion of the 

natives. 

"The barracoons were made of rough poles of the 
hardest trees, four or six inches in diameter, driven 
five feet in the ground and clamped together by doub- 
le rows of iron bars. Their roofs were constructed 
of similar wood, strongly secured, and overlaid with a 
thick thatch of long and wiry grass, rendering the 
interior both dry and cool. Watch-houses, bui t near 
the entrance, were tenanted by sentinels, with loaded 
muskets. Each barracoon was tended by two or four 
Spaniards or Portuguese, but I have rarely met a 
more wretched class of human beings. Such were tne 
surroundings of Don Pedro in 183G. Three years 
later he left the coast forever with a fortune of nearly 
a million." 

* There are records of more than one woman being engaged in the 
ilave-trade on her own account. 




A WILD DASH FOR LIFE WAS MADE. 

See page 60. 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST 65 

Captain Drake, under date of January 5, 1840, 
writes of another coast prince as follows : 

"DaSouza, or Clia-Cliu, as everybody calls him, is 
apparently a reckless voluptuary, but the shrewdest 
slave-trader on the African coast. Whydah was built 
by his enterprise, and he lives the life of a prince. 
His mansion here is like a palace, and he has a harem 
filled with women from all parts of the world. He 
keeps up a continual round of dissipation, gambling, 
feasting, and indulging in every sensual pleasure with 
his women and visitors. . . . His house is the 
very abode of luxury. He must squander thousands. 
But what is money to a man who has a slave-mine in 
Dahomey, bringing hoards of wealth yearly by a hun- 
dred vessels. Da Souza enjoys almost a monopoly of 
the coast tradt\ Blanco has been his only rival of 
late years. . . . This morning Cha-Chu met me 
and proposed to supply me with a wife. ' You shall 
have French, Spanish, Greek, Circassian, English, 
Dutch, Italian, Asiatic, African or American,' he 
said laughing." 

The origin of the demand for silks and other fancy 
goods of which Commodore Perry made mention is 
thus apparent. 

The kidnapping and the raiding were increased, al- 
though the market price of slaves fell as low as from 
$12 to $20 a head. The demand continued because 
the hardships of the slave-life killed off the slaves 
more rapidly than slave children were born. This 
was true even in certain parts of the United States. 
Virginia and some other States were breeding places, 
but by a statement printed in De Boio's Remew for 
November, 1858, it appears that the slave population 



66 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

of Louisiana in 1850 was 244,985. The report of the 
State Auditors to the Legislature of 1858 puts it at 
"264,985, an increase of 20,167, or twelve and one-half 
per cent., in seven years." The slaves had increased 
at the rate of less than 3,000 a year in spite of the im- 
portation of thousands from the slave-breeding States 
and the smuggling of native Africans ! 

The raids were extended hundreds of miles inland, 
according to Canot. In the atrocities of the raids 
there could be no change lor the worse, because 
there was no form of torture or degradation be- 
low that already existing. There was a greater vol- 
ume of suffering ; there could be no worse degree 
of it. 

The history of the slave-trade is in one respect 
unique. In all other forms of industry there was a 
steady amelioration of the people engaged in them as 
civilization grew brighter. On the sea for instance, 
the cat was abolished as a lawful instrument of dis- 
cipline and impressment was abandoned. Even in 
the killing of cattle humane methods came to be 
adopted. But the handling of slaves, from the be- 
ginning of the trade to its end, was like a portrayal of 
the myth of the bottomless pit. 

And yet, black as was the panorama of the trade as 
described in history, there was one dash of warm 
color in it to relieve the aching heart of the spectator. 
Says Charles W. Thomas, U. S. N., chaplain to the 
African squadron in 1855, in a work relating to coast 
usages : 

"In time of famine men who have no slaves to dis- 
pose of, or not enough to meet the demand, pawn 
themselves . . . for food. ... A degree of ad- 



ON THE SLAVE-COAST g7 

mirable self-immolation is sometimes shown in such 
cases of family distress by a member coming forward 
and offering himself to the highest bidder, willing to 
go anywhere or to be anything so that he may re- 
lieve his father and mother or other dear relatives 
from distress." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 

Stowing Slaves for the Voyage from Africa to a Market — The 
Galleries— Compelled to Lie ''Spoon-fashion" to Save 
Deck Space— A Plan by which the 'Tween Decks Space was 
Packed Full— Effects of the Ship's Rolling on the Manacled 
Cargo — Living Slaves Jettisoned to Make a Claim on the 
Underwriters— Horrors of "The Blood-Stained Gloria'' — 
Blinded Crews of the Rodeur and the Leon — Suicide 
Among the Tortured Slaves — Pitiful Tale of a Weanling's 
Death — Punishing Mutiny on the American Slaver Ken- 
tucky— '^\2.\t Ships Named for Two of Our Presidents. 

The term Middle Passage arose from the fact that 
each slaving voyage w^as made up of three passages — 
the passage from the home port to the slave coast, the 
passage from the slave coast to the market, and the 
passage from that market back to the home port — 
say, Newport or Liverpool. It was during the mid- 
dle of the three passages that the slaves were on board. 
This passage was invariably made, of course, from the 
east to the west, and the route lay, for the greater 
part of its length, in the torrid zone, even when the 
slaves were destined for the United States. 

Most of the ships built for the trade in the eigh- 
teenth century had two decks. The space between 
the keel and the lower deck was called the lower hold, 
while the space between the two decks was sometimes 

68 



THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 69 

called the upper hold, but was generally designated 
" 'tween decks." The 'tween- deck space was reserved 
for the slaves. The new slaver built at " Warren in the 
county of Bristole, in the colony of Rhode Island," 
was to be " ten feet in the hold, with three feet ten 
inches betwixt decks." That is to say, the space be- 
tween the decks where the slaves were to be kept 
during the time the cargo was accumulating (three to 
ten months) and while crossing the Atlantic (six to ten 
weeks) was a room as long and as wide as the ship, but 
only three feet ten inches high — the space of an aver- 
age Newport slaver in the days when the traffic was 
lawful and respected. 

The men were ironed together, two and two by the 
ankles, but women and children were left unironed. 
They were then taken to the slave-deck, the males for- 
ward of a bulkhead built abaft the main liatch, and 
the women aft. There all were compelled to lie down 
with their backs on the deck and feet outboard. In 
this position the irons on the men were usually secured 
to chains or iron rods that were rove through staples 
in the deck, or the ceiling of the ship. The entire deck 
w^as covered with them lying so. They were squeezed 
so tightly together, in fact, that the average space 
allowed to each one was but sixteen inches wide by five 
and a half feet long. 

In the Liverpool ships in the latter part of the eigh- 
teenth century — ships that carried from three hun- 
dred to five hundred slaves at a load — the average 
height between the two decks was five feet two inches. 
This statement of the average distance between decks 
was proven by measuring many ships. But that is not 
to say that the slaves were more comfortable on the 



70 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

ships having greater space between decks. On the 
contrary, they were less so. Economy of space was 
studied with a sliarp eye. It would never do to allow 
all that space between decks to remain unoccupied. 
So a shelf or gallery, usually six feet wide, was sus- 
pended midway between the two decks, and on this an- 
other layer of slaves was placed Of course the deck 
under the shelf or gallery was covered with slaves 
packed as closely together as possible. This shelf was 
made of unplaned lumber, and there was no effort to 
make tight the joints between the boards. 

The smaller ships — the sloops and schooners that 
had no 'tween-decks — were arranged for stowing the 
slaves by building a temporary deck beneath the upper 
one. Having stowed the barrels of food and water in 
the hold so as to occupy as little space as possible, a 
row of stanchions, fore and aft on the keelson, and 
rising just above the barrels, was erected. These 
were connected by a ridge-pole, and from this ridge- 
pole rafters were extended to the sides of the ship. 
On the rafters common unplaned boards were laid. 
Thus a deck was laid that could be easily removed on 
occasion. 

The space between this deck and the upper one was 
rarely, if ever, more than three feet high, and cases are 
on record where it was considerably less than two 
feet— in this century even as little as eighteen inches. 

Most of the vessels used after the trade was out- 
lawed were of the small, single-decked class. Be- 
cause the trade was unlawful these slavers had to be 
prepared to pass as palm-oil buyers when they were 
overhauled by a cruiser, and they could not do that if 
they had a slave-deck laid. Accordingly the slave- 



THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 71 

deck was not laid until the slaves were on the beach 
ready to embark. Being then in great haste the slaver 
did not usually go to the trouble of erecting stanchions 
and building his deck substantially. He merely laid 
his rafters or timbers on the barrels, as best he might ; 
spread the boards over them, with a nail driven in here 
and there, perhaps, but sometimes with never a nail to 
hold them in place, and then the slaves were brought 
on board and jammed into the thin space with less 
regard for their comfort than is shown now for hogs 
shipped in a two-deck stock-car. 

In fact, when the cruisers became at last somewhat 
vigilant, cargoes were shipped in vessels that had no 
slave-deck ; the slaves were piled on the barrels of food 
and water until the barrels were blanketed out of 
sight. 

But the limit of devilish ingenuity in stowing slaves 
was not reached until the trade was outlawed. To in- 
crease the number of slaves on the deck they were then 
compelled to lie on their sides, breast to back, "spoon 
fashion," to use the term then common. Where the 
'tween-deck space was two feet high or more the slaves 
were stowed sitting up in rows, one crowded into the 
lap of another, and with legs on legs, like riders on a 
crowded toboggan. In storms the sailors had to put 
on the hatches, and seal tight the openings into the 
infernal cesspool. It was asserted by the naval officers 
who were stationed on the coast to stop the traffic that 
in certain states of the weather they could detect the 
odor of a slaver further aw^ay than they could see her 
on a clear night. The odor was often unmistakable 
at a distance of five miles down wind. 

It was possible for a humane ship-master, such as 



72 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Captain Hugh Crow, tlie one-eyed slaver of Liverpool, 
by alleviating the sujfferings of the slaves by means 
of good food, daily washings, and some effort to make 
them cheerful, such as playing musical instruments, 
etc., to keep the death rate down to one or two per 
centum. Captain John Newton, who became a famous 
preacher, says regarding his own experience: 

"I had the pleasure to return thanks in the churches 
for an African voj^age performed without any acci- 
dent or the loss of a man ; and it was much noticed 
and acknowledged in the town. I question if it is not 
the only instance of the kind. ... It [the slave- 
trade] is, indeed, accounted a genteel employment, 
and is usually very profitable." 

Other captains did carry a cargo each without the 
loss of a man, but such passages were rare. The or- 
dinary slaver captain at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was not so careful, while many a slaver was sim- 
ply without any sympathy for the unfortunates. 

The story of the Zong. Captain Luke Collingvvood, 
illustrates this statement. The Zong sailed from the 
island of St. Thomas, off the coast of Africa, on Sep- 
tember 6, 1781, bound for Jamaica, with four hundred 
and forty slaves. The water on board was insufficient 
in quantity, and the slaves began to die for want of it. 
On arriving off Jamaica, Collingwood made the mis- 
take of supposing he was off Hayti, and the death-rate 
was now so great that he began to think tlie vo^'age 
would be unprofitable. On casting about for some 
way of saving the owners from the impending loss of 
profits, Captain Collingwood remembered that the 
underwriters were always obliged to pay for all cargo 
jettisoned — thrown overboard — either to lighten the 




EVERY SOUL ON BOARD WAS BLIND. 

See page 76. 



THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 73 

ship or to provide in any way for the safety of the 
cargo retained on board. In short, if the slaves died 
of disease or from lack of water while on board the 
ship, the loss would fall on the ship ; but if he threw 
overboard some of them so that he would have enough 
food and water to abundantly nourish those remaining, 
he could collect the price of those thrown into the sea 
from the underwriters. 

According]}^, one hundred and thirty-two of the most 
wretched slaves were brought on deck. Of these one 
hundred and twent3"-two were thrown to the sharks 
that swarmed about the ship; but ten, seeing that 
they were to be thrown over, and that most of the 
sufferers were writhing in abject terror — these ten 
struggled to their feet, and, in spite of cramps and 
weakness, staggered to the rail and plunged over, that 
they might show the others how to die. 

The underwriters refused to pay, however ; the case 
went to court, and the jury decided in favor of the 
ship. Solicitor-General J. Lee refused to carry the 
case to a higher court. He said the master had "an 
unquestionable right" to throw the slaves into the 
sea. 

"This is a case of goods and chattels," said he. " It 
is really so ; it is a case of throwing over goods ; for 
to this purpose, and the purpose of insurance, they 
are goods .and property." 

The insurers appealed the case, and the court above. 
Lord Mansfield, presiding, in spite of the plain man- 
date of statute — disregarding the obvious meaning of 
the laws, with the making of which he had nothing to 
do — yielded to liis sense of humanity, decided accord- 
ing to "the higher law," and said, " It is a very shock- 



74 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

iiig case." He granted a new trial, at which the in- 
surers escaped paying for the loss. So the laws, being 
unjust, were violated — disregarded even — by the 
courts before the}^ were repealed. Such sacrifice of a 
part of a cargo of slaves to save the others was com- 
mon enough in the history of the trade. 

For a picture of a slaver of the lower class take that 
given by Drake in his " Revelations of a Slave-Smug- 
gler." He says : 

We had left the Verds, and were making southerly in bal- 
last, when we overhauled a Portuguese schooner, and ran 
alongside. She had a full cargo of slaves, with a large quan- 
tity of gold-dust, and our captain, Ruiz, proposed to attack 
her. The crew were ready, and, inspired by rum, soon mas- 
tered the schooner's hands ; our captain blowing out the 
brains of a passenger, who owned the gold. Some of the 
Portuguese leaped overboard, with spars ; but Ruiz had a 
boat manned, and knocked the survivors on the head with 
axes. The gold-dust and negroes were then quickly trans- 
ferred to the slaver, the schooner was scuttled, and we kept 
on our way to the land with 190 slaves. . . . We then 
ran for Accra, and landed at Papoe, a town belonging to 
a Dahoman chief, where we found 600 negroes, waiting for a 
Spanish slaver, soon expected. Ruiz bought 400 of these, 
paying in the Portuguese gold-dust, and hauled our course 
for the Atlantic voyage. 

But this was to be my last trip in the blood-stained 
Gloria. Hardly were we out a fortnight before it was dis- 
covered that our roystering crew had neglected to change the 
sea-water which had served as our ballast, in the lower casks, 
and which ought to have been replaced with fresh water in 
Africa. We were drawing from the last casks before this dis- 
covery was made ; and the horror of our situation sobered 
Caj)tain Ruiz. He gave orders to hoist the precious remnant 
abaft the main grating, and made me calculate how long it 



THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 76 

would sustain the crew and cargo. I found that half a gill a 
day would hold out to the Spanish main ; and it was de- 
cided that, in order to save our cargo, we should allow the 
slaves a half gill, and the crew a gill, each day. Then began 
a torture worse than death to the blacks. Pent in their close 
dungeons, to the number of nearly five hundred, they suffered 
continual torment. Our crew and drivers were unwilling to 
allow even the half gill per diem, and quarrelled fiercely over 
their own stinted rations. Our cargo had been stowed on 
the platforms closer than I ever saw slaves stowed before or 
since. Instead of lowering buckets of water to them, as was 
customary, it became necessary to pour the water into half- 
pint measures. Those furthest from the gratings never got a 
drop. . . . Death followed so fast that in a short time 
at least a hundred men and women were shackled to dead 
partners. Our captain and crew, as well as myself, drank 
hard. . . . The dead were not thrown overboard. At 
last Captain Ruiz ordered the hatches down, and swore he 
would make the run on our regular water rations, and take 
the chances of his stock. 

That night we caroused, and satisfied our thirst, whilst 
the negroes suffocated below. Next morning came a stonn, 
which drove us on our course a hundred knots. Two days 
afterward, Ruiz and four of the men were taken suddenly ill 
with a disease that baffled my medical knowledge. Their 
tongues swelled, and grew black ; their flesh turned yellow, 
and in six hours they were dead. The first mate went nest, 
and then three others of the crew, and a black driver, whose 
body became leprous with j-ellow spots. I began to notice a 
sti-ange, fetid smell pervading the vessel, and a low, heavy 
fog on deck, almost like steam. Then the horrid truth 
became apparent. Our rotting negroes under hatches had 
generated the plague, and it was a malaria or death-mist that 
I saw rising. At this time all our men but three and myself 
had been attacked ; and we abandoned the Gloria, in her 
long boat, taking the remnant of water, a sack of biscuit, and 
a rum beaker, with what gold-dust and other valuables we 



76 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

could hastily gather up. We left nine of our late comrades 
dead and five djdng on the Glorias deck. After running for 
two days we struck a current, and in three more wei-e drifted 
to the island of Tortola. 

People familiar with Whittiei's poems will recall 
" The Slave Ships," founded on the experience of the 
French slaver Rodeur. In 1819 while she was on her 
way to Guadeloupe with but one hundred and sixty- 
two slaves on board, a disease of the eyes appeared in 
the hold and spread rapidly. To save the unaffected 
and to ground a claim on the underw^riters, the captain 
threw thirty-six of the negroes alive into the sea. The 
disease continued its ravages, however, and soon at- 
tacked the crew with such malignancy that in a short 
time all but one of them became blind. 

In this terrorful condition a sail was seen, and the 
one man who had the use of his eyes steered the Ro- 
deur toward her. In a short time she was seen to be 
drifting derelict with all sail set, though men were 
wandering about her deck. The man on the Rodeur 
hailed her, and then her crew swarmed to her rail and 
begged for help, saying that she was the Spanish 
slaver Leon, and that every soul on board was 
blind through the ophthalmia generated among the 
slaves. 

The Rodeur reached port steered by the one man, 
but he went blind on reaching shore. The Leon was 
never seen again. 

To the stories of the ills of the Middle Passage so 
far given must be added those which relate to the 
mental sufferings of the slaves and those that grew 
out of the deliberate cruelty of the crews. Indeed it 
is not to much to say that the saddest result of the 



THE 'MIDDLE PASSAGE 77 

slave trade now visible is the mental attitude of the 
white race of America toward the colored. 

"The ships," said Dr. Alexander Falconbridge, of 
the slaver Tartai\ "were fitted up with a view of pre- 
venting slaves jumping overboard," but an opening 
was left in the netting set above the rail in order that 
refuse might be dumped overboard, and through this 
many a negro leaped to his death. Others managed 
to secrete rope-yarn or strong twine, by which a noose 
was made and secured to a cleat overhead, and so the 
slave strangled himself to death. One tore his throat 
open with his finger-nails. Many others, to kill them- 
selves, refused to eat. They were flogged to compel 
them to eat, but this failed so often that it was the 
custom for all slavers to carry a tube-like instrument 
used by surgeons to force food into the mouths of pa- 
tients suffering from lockjaw. This was driven into 
the mouths of obstinate negroes, smashing lips and 
teeth, until food could be forced down the throat. In- 
stances were described where the lips were burned with 
coals and hot irons to compel the negroes to open their 
mouths and swallow the food. 

How men and women were flogged to death ; how 
they died smiling under the blows, saying, "Soon we 
shall be free" ; how they leaped overboard and exult- 
mgly bade farewell to friends who rejoiced in their 
escape — all that has been told over and again by the 
slaver captains themselves. 

One of the most pitiful stories known to these 
annals is told in connection with the slaver habit of 
compelling his slaves to eat. There was a child, less 
than a year old, that could not eat the boiled rice pre- 
pared for it, and the captain decided that it was stub- 



78 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

born, rather than sick. Getting angry as the little 
one repeatedly turned its head from the food, he 
grabbed it from its mother's arms. He tied a twelve- 
pound stick of wood to its neck as a punishment, and 
thereafter flogged it with the cat at each meal-time 
until the fourth day, when, after the whipping, it 
died. To make complete his work, the captain, whip 
in hand, then called the child' s mother to pick up the 
little body and throw it over the rail. She refused at 
first, but, tortured by the cat, she took up the child, 
walked to the ship's side, and turning her head away 
dropped the body into the sea. 

Of the truth of the story there is no doubt. It was 
told under oath before a committee of Parliament, 
and of all the tales of inhuman deeds perpetrated by 
the slavers, none had more effect in ridding the earth 
of the traffic than this. 

From one point of view the picture of a gang of 
slaves when on deck for an airing was one of the most 
shocking known to the trade. For the slaver captain 
knew how much brooding over their wrongs tended to 
promote disease, and his chief object in bringing them 
on deck was to cheer them. He wanted them to sing 
and dance, and he saw that they did it too — he ap- 
plied the lash not only to make them eat, but to make 
them sing. There they stood in rows and as the 
brawny slaver, whip in hand, paced to and fro, they 
sang their home-songs, and danced, each with his free 
foot slapping the deck. 

When the slaves tried to kill themselves because 
they believed in the resurrection and a life in their 
old homes after death, some of the slaver captains 
mutilated the bodies of the dead by cutting off and 



THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 79 

carrying along the heads or other portions of the 
bodies, and telling the slaves that thus the dead 
would be wholly unable to exist, or, at any rate, to 
enjoy the life they hoped for after death. But the 
slaves smiled in contempt when they heard that. 
They were of a heathen race. They had never learned 
the Christian's hope of heaven, but something had told 
them (who shall say how ?) that the body, though it be 
"sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption " — 
that though it be " sown a natural body, it is raised a 
spiritual body." And thej^— those heathen — trusted 
implicitly the light they had. 

It is a most interesting fact that while the slave 
trade developed vikings when it was a legal and 
reputable traffic, it developed a race devoid of every 
manly instinct when it became unlawful. As illus- 
trating this tact, it may be said that in the nineteenth 
century the slavers dealt in children as far as pos- 
sible. Children did not bring as large a price as field 
hands, of course, but they cowered under torture, and 
there was no fear of their rising against the crew. 

But many adult cargoes were shipped, and the 
American slaver Kentucky, Captain George H. Doug- 
lass, master, and Thomas H. Boyle, mate, was one 
that carried adults. On September 9, 1844, she sailed 
from Tnhambane with five hundred and thirty slaves 
in her hold. On the voyage there was an insurrection. 
It was quickly subdued by force, but, through fear of 
more trouble of the kind, the captain determined to 
punish the ringleaders. In all, forty-six men and one 
woman were hanged and shot to death. 

"They were ironed or chained, two together, and 
when they were hung, a rope was put round their 



80 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

necks and they dra\Yn up to the yard-arm clear of the 
sail," said one of the crew when testifying under 
oath. "This did not kill them, but only choked or 
strangled them. They were then shot in the breast 
and the bodies thrown overboard. If only one of two 
that were ironed together was to be hung, the rope 
was put around his neck and he was drawn up clear 
of the deck, and his leg laid across the rail and 
chopped off to save the irons and release him from 
his companion, who at the same time lifted up his leg 
till the other was chopped off as aforesaid, and he 
released. 

"The bleeding negro was then drawn up, shot in 
the breast, and thrown overboard as aforesaid. The 
legs of about one dozen were chopped off in this way. 

" When the feet fell on deck they were picked up 
by the crew and thrown overboard, and sometimes 
they shot at the body while it still hung living, and 
all kinds of sport was made of the business. 

" When the woman was hung up and shot, the ball 
did not take effect, and she was thrown overboard liv- 
ing, and was seen to struggle some time in the water 
before she sunk ; and deponent further says, that 
after this was over they brought up and flogged about 
twenty men and six women. The flesh of some of 
them where they were flogged putrefied and came off 
in some cases six or eight inches in diameter, and in 
places half an inch thick." 

This story, sworn to before United States Consul 
George William Gordon, was repeated by Consul 
Henry A. Wise (of Virginia) in an official communi- 
cation to Secretary of State James Buchanan, under 
date of May 1, 1845. James K. Polk was tlien Presi- 



TUE MIDDLE I'ASSAGE 81 

dent of the United States, and this story and other 
stories of like character were sent to the Congress of 
the United States in House Ex. Doc. 61, 30th Congress 
second session, and Senate Ex. Doc. 28 of the same 
session. 

Said Consul Wise in an official letter dated Febru- 
ary 18, 1845 : 

" I beseech, I implore, the President of the Uuited States 
to take a decided stand on this subject. You have no con- 
ception of the bold effrontery and the flagrant outrages of the 
African slave-trade, and of the shameless manner in which its 
worst crimes are licensed here. And every patriot in our land 
would blush for our country did he know and see, as I do, 
how our own citizens sail and sell our Jlag to the uses and 
abuses of that accursed traffic. We are a ' by-word among 
nations ' — the only people who can now fetch and carry any 
and everything for the slave-trade . . . and, because we 
are the only people who can, are we to allow our proudest 
privilege to be perverted, and to pervert our own glorious flag 
into the pirates Jla<j? " 

Neither James Buchanan nor James K. Polk, nor 
any other member of any administration from and 
including that of Andrew Jackson down to the Civil 
War, did anything that could in justice be called an 
effort to stop the use of the American flag for cover- 
ing such atrocities. 

It is a significant fact that there was one slave-ship 
named Martin Van Burea and another named James 
Buchanan. It is a pity that these two slavers could 
not have been preserved in the navy yard of the 
American metropolis as monuments to the officials 
whose names they bore, and to remind the shuddering 
spectator that along with our days of magnificent 
glory we have had our age of infinite shame. 

6 



CHAPTER Vll 

THE SLAVERS' PROFIT 

Nine Hundred Pounds on One Voyage of the Newport Slaver 
Sander son, a Vessel that was Offered for Sale at ;{^450 
with No Buyers — One Voyage of the Liverpool Slaver 
Enterprise that Paid ;^24,430— Details of Expenses and 
Receipts on a Voyage of the Ninety-ton Schooner La For- 
ttma—A Baltimore Schooner's Profit of $100,000— When 
the l^enus Cleared $200,000— Sums Paid to Captains and 
Crews — Slave Transportation Compared with Modern Pas- 
senger Traffic. 

It has been repeatedly asserted in the course of this 
work that the slave-trade was, on the whole, enor- 
mously profitable, and it is now proposed to give in a 
business way some facts in verification of those asser- 
tions. There were, of course, many voyages that went 
awry, but that that was not the usual course of the 
trade is abundantly proved. Thus, the fact that New- 
port had one hundred and fifty vessels in the trade by 
the middle of the eighteenth century, shows what 
Newport merchants made out of the traffic. That 
Liverpool had but one sloop of thirty tons in the trade 
in 1729, while in 1751 "no fewer than fifty-three 
vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 5,334 tons, sailed 
from the Mersey for the slave-coast," shows how Liver- 
pool slavers prospered. But something more than 

these general statements must prove of interest. 

83 



THE SLAVEE'S PROFIT 83 

To go back to an early period, we find that the 
negroes imported on the White Horse (the first slaver 
sent out from New York for the direct trade with 
Africa) were sold at auction for an average price of 
$125 each for the choice stock. The negroes had arrived 
in a bad condition, but they were doctored up for the 
sale, and brought good prices for that day, so that the 
slaver made a good profit even though the purchasers 
afterward lost some of their slaves. The exact profit is 
not given, but the fact that a profit was made is proved 
by the act of the directors of the West India Company 
taking the trade thereafter into their own hands. 

When Captain David Lindsay, of the Sanderson, 
sold the cargo he landed "in helth and fatt" in 
1753 he received £35 each for twenty-five of his 
slaves, £30 each for three more, while the remainder 
brought prices ranging down to £21, save one small 
boy who brought £15. All told, forty-seven slaves sold 
here brought £1,432. The remaining slaves were car- 
ried to Newport, but there is no record of their sale. 
We may guess that they realized about £250, or, say, 
a total of £1,680 for the cargo of slaves. 

The net profit on this voyage cannot be ascertained 
now, but Captain George Scott's letter of 1740 says 
that a prime slave cost £12 in the unsalable dry goods, 
while other documents show that in 1753 a prime slave 
cost one hundred and ten gallons of rum, or £11. The 
gross profit on the slaves sold in Barbadoes was doubt- 
less as much as £900, and the net profit on the whole 
voyage, after the remaining slaves were sold elsewhere, 
was at least £900. And yet the Sanderson had been 
offered for sale several years earlier for £450, and 
during this voyage, as we have learned already, her 



84 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

captain was able to see " daylight al round *' through 
the open seams in her bows. 

In Williams's " Liverpool Slave Trade" it is shown 
that in 1786 the Liverpool slavers sold 31,690 slaves 
for £1,282,690 net. The gross value of the goods ex- 
ported to Africa was £864,895, while the maintenance 
of the slaves cost £15,845. That leaves £401,950 for 
the owners of the slavers, from which, however, they 
had to pay their crews and the wear and tear of the 
ships. These expenses are classed as "freight," at 
£103,488, but the fact is there was a profit on the 
"freight." Nevertheless, calling the freight all ex- 
pense, the clean profit was £298,462. 

That is an estimate giving the expenses at the highest 
limit, and the sales at the lowest. Going more into 
detail, the returns for a single good voyage are given. 

The ship Lottery, Captain John Whittle, belonged 
to Mr. Thomas Leyland, who was "thrice Mayor of 
Liverpool." She sailed from the Mersey on July 6, 
1798, and passed Barbadoes on November 27th with 
four hundred and sixty negroes. Of these four hun- 
dred and fifty-three were sold for £22,726 net — the 
owner received that sum after paying all commissions 
and charges. From this sum, however, must be de- 
ducted £2,307 IOd. for the ship's outfit and £8,326 14s. 
for the cost of the cargo sent out to Africa, a total of 
£10,634, which leaves the sum of £12,091 profit on the 
voyage. That is to say the profit on each negro was 
over £26, and it was earned in six months. 

The Lottery in another voyage cleared £19,021. The 
Enterprise on a cargo of three hundred and ninety- 
two slaves landed, cleared £24,430. The Fortune on 
three hundred and forty-three cleared £9,487. The 



THE SLAVER'S PKOFIT g5 

Louisa on tliree hundred and twenty-six slaves cleared 
£19,133. The Bloom, belonging to another house, on 
three hundred and seven slaves cleared <£8,123. An 
average of six voyages shows a clean profit of X43 
per slave. And to this profit was added that on the 
West India goods carried to Liverpool when the ship 
went home to refit. 

Other estimates of single voyages give profits rang- 
ing from £12 up to £40 per head landed. 

An important element in the trade was the cost of 
the ship. The records show that a good ship fit to 
carry from three hundred to four hundred slaves could 
be built for £7,500. Such a ship would make a clean 
profit of from £7,000 to £20,000 each voyage, and it is 
certain that some of them made as high as five voyages 
before they became so foul that they had to be aban- 
doned. 

Of the profits made when the trade was declared to 
be pirac}^ we have abundant records, even though it 
was a smuggling business. 

Captain Theodore Canot in his autobiographj', 
"Twenty Years of an African Slaver" (it is prac- 
tically an autobiography), has the following (p. 101) : 

As the reader may scarcely credit so large a profit, I sub- 
join an account of the fitting of a slave vessel from Havana in 
1827, and the liquidation of her voyage in Cuba : 

1. — Expenses Out. 

Cost of La Fortuna, a 90-ton schooner. . . . $3,700.00 
Fitting out, sails, carpenter's and cooper's 

bills 2,500.00 

Provisions for crew and slaves 1,115.00 

Wages advanced to 18 men before the mast 900.00 



gg THE AMEKICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Wages advanced to captain, mates, boat- 
swain, cook and steward 440.00 

200,000 cigars and 500 doubloons, cargo . 10,900.00 

Clearance and bush-money 200.00 

Total $19,755.00 

Commission at 5^ 987.00 

Full cost of voyage out $20,742.00 

2. — Expenses Home. 

Captain's head-money, at $8 a head $1,736.00 

Mate's " " " $4" " 873.00 

Second mate's and boatswain's head- 
money, at $2 each 873.00 

Captain's wages 219,78 

First mate's wages 175.56 

Second mate's and boatswain's wages 307.12 

Cook's and steward's wages 264.00 

18 sailors' wages 1,972.00 

Total of expenses out and home $27,162.46 

3. — Expenses in Havana. 

Government officers, at $8 per head $1,736.00 

My commission on 217 slaves, expenses off 5,565.00 

Consignees' commission 3,873.00 

217 slave dresses 634.00 

Extra expenses of all kinds 1,000.00 

Total of all expenses $39,970.46 

4, — Eefurns. 

Vessel at auction $3,950.00 

Proceeds of 217 slaves 77,469.00 

$81,419.00 



THE SLAVER'S PROFIT 87 

Eesume. 

Total Returns $81,419.00 

" Expenses 39,970.46 

Net Profit $41,448.54 

Witli a schooner that cost $3,700 and a total capital 
all told, amounting to less than $21,000, the net profit 
in six months was $41,438.54. 

Writing on the same subject, Captain Philip Drake 
tells about one voyage he made in the schooner Na- 
poleon. 

"The Napoleon was a ninety-ton Baltimore clipper, 
a model for speed and symmetry. She came out from 
Cuba, in ballast, as a new craft, and made two suc- 
cessful trips before, at Don Pedro's request, I supplied 
the place of mate and surgeon in her last voyage, 
when she sailed freighted with two hundred and fifty 
full-grown men and one hundred picked boys and girls 
for the Cuban market. By actual calculation the 
average cost per head of the three hundred and fifty 
was $16, and in Havana the market average was 
$360, yielding a profit for the whole, if safely de- 
livered, at $360 a head, of $120,400 on the slaves. 
Subtracting $20,000 from this, the average cost of 
the clipper' s round trip, including commissions, and 
her earnings would be $100,000 in round numbers. 
Such were the enormous profits of the slave-trade in 
1835." 

An official report on the first voyage of the beautiful 
Baltimore clipper ship Venus [See House Ex. Doc. 115, 
2Gth Cong. 2d Sess.] says : 

"With regard to the ^YA^Venus^ otherwise the Du- 
quesa de Braganza, we should state that the original 



88 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

cost, we understand, was 30,000 dollars ; and that the 
fitting out, and expenses of every description for the 
voyage, including the value of the return cargo, was 
estimated at $60,000 more. The number of negroes 
brought back, as has been before stated, was 860 ; and 
they are said to have been sold at 340 dollars per head, 
producing the sum of nearly 300,000 dollars ; of which 
therefore two- thirds was net profit." That was in 
1838-39. 

As far back as 1827, the captain of a small slaves 
would receive $2,000 for a round trip requiring six 
months' time, while the mate got $1,000. To fully ap- 
preciate how much money that was to a ship's officers 
one has to remember that even now there are plenty of 
captains of schooners and barks of a thousand tons 
capacity who receive but $75 or $80 a month, although 
wages all around are fifty per cent, higher, and even 
more. The captains of transatlantic liners to-day 
receive from $2,000 to $3,000 a year, whereas the 
captain of a little ninety-ton slaver got $2,000 in six 
months. The liner that cost, say, a million dollars 
will carry first-class passengers in luxurious state- 
rooms and furnish abundant meals for from $100 to 
$150 for the passage, and $125 is a fair average price 
for superb accommodations on tlie most expensive ves- 
sel. The average profit on a slave after the year 1825 
was not less than $250, or twice the x^rice of a first- 
class passage on a ship costing a million. To make 
the contrast absolutely fair we should say that the 
slaver who received $340 per head, and paid but $20 
in Africa received $320 for transporting tlie slave to 
Cuba. His net profit was reduced to, say, $250 by 
the expenses of the voyage, just as the steam liner's 



THE SLAVER'S PROFIT 89 

net profit may be reduced to $25 by the expenses of 
the voyage. 

However, to be liberal, there was the sum of $250 
net, at least, which the slaver could get for transport- 
ing a negro from Africa to Cuba. If the owners of 
steamships costing a million can afford to carry first- 
class passengers in luxury for $125, the slaver might 
have carried negroes in cleanliness and perfect com- 
fort, and still have realized profits of from fifty to one 
hundred per centum every voyage, from the invest- 
ment. It is plain that the horrors of the Middle Pas- 
sage were not necessarily incident to the transportation 
of slaves from Africa to the West Indies. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SLAVER LEGISLATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

The Colonies often Levied Taxes on Imported Slaves, and these 
Duties were in Rare Cases Prohibitive, but this Legislation 
was always Based on Commercial Considerations Only, or 
else a Fear of Negro Insurrections— Great Britain Never 
Forced the Slave-trade on Them Against Their Virtuous 
Protest — Georgia's Interesting Slave History. 

If there is any chapter in our history that is likely 
to make a patriotic student an utter pessimist, it is the 
chapter relating to American slave legislation. No 
other chapter is so disheartening ; none can excite such 
indignation and contempt. But if we consider that at 
last, after two hundred and forty-two years of oppres- 
sion and robbery, a time came when we did, by legal 
enactment, recognize that a negro man w^as entitled at 
least to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we 
shall not be without hope that a time may yet come 
when we shall fully understand and act upon the Di- 
vine command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy 
self." 

That the British Government, in the interest of Brit- 
ish shipping, did, in the eighteenth century, try to en- 
courage the slave-trade is abundantly proved by many 
other facts than the appropriations, amounting to 
£90,000, which Parliament granted, between 1729 and 
1750, for building, repairing, and supporting forts and 

90 



SLAVER LEGISLATION IN AMERICAN COLONIES 91 

slave-pens on the coast of Africa. But whether the 
American colonies mrtuously struggled to resist and 
suppress the slave-traffic during those years is another 
matter entirely. 

To begin with the facts in the matter, we find that in 
New York in 1709 a tariff duty of £3 per head was laid 
on all negroes imported from any other place than an 
African port^ and this is said to have been prohibitive. 

In connection with this take the letter of the Earl of 
Bellemont to the Lords of Trade : 

" I should advise the sending for negroes to Guinea, 
which I understand are bought there and brought 
hither, all charges whatever being bourne, for £10 a 
piece, New York money. . . . If it were practical 
for the King to be the merchant and that the whole 
management of this undertaking were upon his ac- 
count, were it so, there would be profit of at least £50 
per cent." (Vol. IV. Col. Doc.) 

The tax was laid to promote a direct trade. In 1716 
a tariff then imposed was explained by Governor 
Hunter. (Vol. V., N. Y. Col. Doc.) 

"The duties laid on negroes from ye other colonies 
are intended to encourage their own shipping and dis- 
courage their importing of refuse and sickly negroes 
here from other colonies, which they commonly do." 

The fact is that while New York State eventually 
abolished slavery, it never put so much as a spray of 
sea-weed under the bows of slave-ships owned by her 
citizens. 

In Rhode Island, as early as 1708, a tax of £3 per 
head was laid on all negroes imported. This tax has 
been called a restraint on the trade and it has been 
quoted to show that the Rhode Islanders even thus 



92 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

early showed a glimmering sense of the moral char- 
acter of the slave-trade. The fact is the tax was laid 
to enable the Colonial Government to obtain a share 
of the profits of the trade, and Newport streets were 
first paved out of the proceeds of that tax. 

Moore, in his " Slavery in Massachusetts," points out 
that in 1701 the representatives from Boston were 
"desired [by the voters] to promote the encouraging 
the bringing of white servants, and to put a period to 
negroes being slaves." That looks like a real desire 
to abolish slavery, even though no legislation followed 
on the desire ; but the truth is, the Boston voters were 
animated solely by business principles, as shall be 
pointed out in connection with similar legislation in 
New Jersey. 

Moreover " the law of 1703 (two years later) chapter 
2, was in restraint of the 'Manumission, Discharge 
or Setting free ' of ' Molatto or Negro slaves.' " The 
close-fisted slave-owners had begun " to manumit 
aged or infirm slaves, to relieve the master from the 
charge of supporting them." 

In 1705 Massachusetts again enacted slaver laws. 
One clause of the bill imposed a tax of £4 on each 
slave imported. This looks something like a restraint 
of the trade, but a further examination of the act 
shows that it was "for the Better Preventing of a 
spurious or mixt Issue." It is shocking to learn that 
the j^oung men of Puritan blood were so fond of the 
black Briseises. Another clause of the bill provided 
for an entire rebate of the tax if the slaves were 
exported after having been entered at the custom 
house. The act was really designed to enable the 
colony to share in the profits of the slave-trade, and 



SLAVER LEGISLATION IN AMERICAN COLONIES 93 

to encourage slavers in making Boston a clearing- 
house, so to speak, for the slave-trade of the whole 
continent. 

Du Bois notes that the middle colony and southern 
ports allowed a rebate of not more than one-half the 
duty of reshipment of slaves ; but the student must 
not fail to consider this in its proper light. It was not 
a question of morals — of a desire to suppress the slave- 
trade. The middle and southern ports were merely 
less anxious to promote sea-trafRc — they were less 
under the influence of ship-owners. 

It appears that New Jersey really strove to prohibit 
the trade in 1713, by a duty of £10. This law looks 
quite a little like an honest attempt to extirpate the 
traffic. It certainly was not the expression of a desire 
to participate in the profits, or to promote shipping, 
or to interfere with the trade of other colonies. But 
on looking at the real reason we find (Yol. IV. New 
Jersey Archives) that it was " calculated to Encour- 
age the Importation of white Servants for the better 
Peopeling that Country." 

It was seen clearly in New Jersey, and also in other 
colonies (though dimly in some of them) that white 
servants of a character to become enterprising citizens, 
when their term of slavery was ended, were likely to 
be of more benefit to a community with a climate like 
that of any of the northern colonies than African 
slaves would be. The negro was to be a slave for life 
— a mere laborer whose value was as that of a horse. 
But a large proportion of the white slaves became, at 
last, business men who would develop the natural 
resources of the country, and build the nation. 

And all this is to say, with emphasis, that the pro- 



94 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

hibitive legislation of New Jersey, as of some other 
communities, was based strictl}^ on business considera- 
tions. The only question really was, Which in the 
end will pay best — white or black servants ? 

In Pennsylvania the first law to impose a prohibitive 
tax was passed in 1712, and the bill itself sets forth 
the object in view. It began: "Whereas divers 
Plots and Insurrections have frequently happened, 
not only in the Islands, but on the Mainland of Amer- 
ica, by Negroes, which have been carried on so far 
that several of tlie inhabitants have been barbarously 
Murthered, an Instance whereof we have lately had in 
our Neighboring Colony of New York,'' etc. The act 
ended by imposing a duty of £20. 

For fear the slaves whom they dominated might rise 
to secure liberty and avenge uncounted injuries, the 
people of Pennsylvania decided that no more slaves 
should come in. It was the sheer cowardice of con- 
scious tyrants that animated those Pennsylvania legis- 
lators. 

A similar state of affairs was developed in South 
Carolina very early — in 1698 — when it was said that 
" the great number of negroes which of late have been 
imported into this collony may endanger the safety 
thereof," and a special law to encourage the importa- 
tion of white servants was passed. A few years later, 
when the King of Spain and the Queen of England 
went into the slave-trade in partnership, heavy duties 
were laid on imported negroes, because "the number 
of Negroes do extremely increase," and ^^ tJie safety 
of the said Province is greatly endangered." In 1717 
a duty of £40 currency was laid, and this cut down 
importations so much that a duty of £10 was substi- 



SLAVER LEGISLATION IN AMERICAN COLONIES 96 

tilted for all others in 1719. In 1734 there were 22,000 
slaves to less than 8,000 whites in South Carolina, and 
this state of affairs was exceedingly alarming to the 
whites, especially as insurrections had been attempted. 

An insurrection at Stono under a negro called Cato 
led to a prohibitive duty of £100 laid for a time on 
imported negroes. Again in 1760 the importation was 
prohibited through fear. 

Georgia was first established by charitable English- 
men as a refuge for a lot of people who were im- 
prisoned for debt — in trouble through misfortune 
only. The charter was granted June 9, 1732. It was 
to be "a silk, wine, oil and drug growing colony." 
And negro slavery was absolutely prohibited. 

T. Rundle, one of the trustees of the corporation, in 
a sermon preached at St. George's, February 17, 1733, 
said: "Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an 
honest reluctance in humanity against buying and 
selling, and regarding those of our own species as 
our wealth and possessions." To this Oglethorpe 
himself, the colony's chief promoter, added that the 
slave-trade was "against the gospel as well as the 
fundamental law of England," and that "we refused 
as Trustees to make a law permitting such a horrid 
crime." 

In view of the regulations covering rum and negro 
slaves, Du Bois, the distinguished historian of the 
negro race, is moved to say that "in Georgia we have 
an example of a community whose philanthropic 
founders sought to impose upon it a code of morals 
higher than the colonists wished." 

The fact is, however, that Oglethorpe was Deputy 
Governor of the Royal African Company, the company 



96 THE AMEEICAX SLAVE-TRADE 

chartered to monopolize the slave- trade under the 
famous Assiento contract with Spain — the company 
which agreed to deliver 4,800 slaves per j'^ear, or 144,000 
slaves in all, in the Spanish colonies alone, during the 
course of thirty years, and which did deliver many 
more than 4,800 slaves into the American colonies in 
the very year when Oglethorpe made a speech on the 
slave-trade declaring it a "horrid crime." He also 
owned a plantation near Parachucla, South Carolina, 
forty miles north of the Savannah River, that was 
worked by slaves. Oglethorpe proclaimed (as many 
an American did after him) that the slave-trade was 
"horrid," but he was one of the most active partici- 
pants in it known to his age. The conclusion reached 
by Stevens in his " History of Georgia" is irresistible. 
" It was policy and not philanthropy which prohibited 
slavery" in the settlement of Georgia. The policy 
was the desire to place a buffer — perhaps one should 
rather say a sentinel troop — between the Spanish 
forces of Florida and the English colony of Carolina. 
The Carolina people felt that their slaves were an 
element of great weakness should the Spanish come 
as invaders. A colony of Avhite men only would serve 
as an outpost that the Spaniards would fear and 
respect. 

But Georgia did not prosper as a settlement of 
whites only, and slaves were, at last, introduced, at 
the urgent demand of the colonists. 

To omit further details of colonial policy it may be 
said generally that, with the exception of Georgia, 
every colony did at one time and another impose 
taxes on imported negro slaves, and that in some 
cases the so-called restraint amounted to prohibition. 




HE APPLIED THE LASH NOT ONLY TO MAKE THEM EAT BUT TO MAKE THEM SING. 

See page 78. 



SLAVER LEGISLATION irs AMERICAN COLONIES 97 

But with this admission it must be declared that every 
such tax was laid either through greed {i.e., for the 
sake of giving the State a share of the profits) or 
through the idea that from a business point of view 
white servants would develop the country more rapid- 
ly ; or through a mean and degrading fear of the 
blacks. Not one act passed by a colonial legislature 
showed any appreciation of the intrinsic evil in the 
trade or tended to extirpate it from the seas — not one. 
It might as well be asserted that our present tariff on 
imported woollen goods shows that we abhor shep- 
herds and desire to extirpate the world's traffic in 
wool, as to assert that the colonial tariffs on the slave- 
trade were honest efforts to rid the world of a horrid 
traffic. The world was not at that time sufficiently 
civilized to even discuss the rights of slaves. It was 
not until 1772 that Granville Sharp, the lone aboli- 
tionist of England, got one lone question regarding one 
right of one lone slave heard and decided in an Eng- 
lish court. The assertion that the British forced the 
traffic on unwilling colonists in America is a puling 
whine. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE EARLY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION 

The Word* and Deeds of the Fanatics— The Quakers— Slaves 
that were Freed by Baptism — Granville Sharp as a Liber- 
ator—A Fanatic's Political Creed Plainly Stated— Wide- 
spread Influence of the Somerset Case when the Right Pre- 
vailed in England— A Policy that would not Square Well 
with a Practical Business Sense of Things — The American 
Declaration of Independence and the Black Men. 

When Sir John Hawkins, flushed with success, was 
telling Good Queen Bess how he had taken, "partly by 
the sword and partly by other means" three hundred 
negroes from the coast of Guinea to the far side of the 
Atlantic and sold them there with ^'profit, the heart of 
the Queen was touched and she saw, back o;f the "great 
profit," the picture of the negroes when they were 
torn from their homes by force, and she said the deed 
"was detestable." For one brief moment she saw 
clear-eyed, and a writer recorded her words where 
they were most likely to find readers among her 
people — in a naval history. 

The importance of the fact that her words were 
printed is to be emphasized. The reader will recall 
what Carlyle says of the voiceless millions, whose suf- 
ferings made the Frencli revolution possible, in contrast 
with the screaming outcries of the few who were un- 

98 



THE EAKLY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION 99 

justly treated therein while those millions held power. 
When the protest of Elizabeth was printed, the voice- 
less negro slave was heard. 

In like fashion the slave was heard again when 
Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman employed by the slave- 
holding missionary society of England, wrote "The 
Negroes' and Indians' Advocate." Then Richard 
Baxter wrote a "Christian Directory," wherein he 
gives "advice to those masters in foreign plantations 
who have negroes and other slaves." 

They were sowing good seed — a sort of winter- 
wheat crop, one may say. The Pennsylvania Quakers 
took up the work and on "the 13th day of the 8th 
month, 1693," at "our Monthly Meeting in Phila- 
delphia," prepared an "Exhortation and Caution to 
Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes." 

They were opposed to "keeping negroes for Term 
of Life" for several reasons clearly stated, the 
"fifthly" of which shall be quoted: " Because slaves 
and souls of men are some of the Mercliandize of 
Babylon, by which the Merchants of the Earth are 
made Rich." 

In the valuable and interesting book called "The 
Workers" by Walter A. Wyckoff, is a graphic de- 
scription of the effect, as he observed it, of a sermon 
upon a wealthy congregation in a Chicago church 
which he attended that he might see how a laborer 
would be received among the wealthy. So earnest 
was the preacher, so intent were the audience, that (to 
quote the author) ' ' it was as though distress had ceased 
to be for them the visible sufferings of the poor, and 
had grown, through the deepening sense of brother- 
hood, into an anguish of their own, which must find 



100 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

healing in forms of effective helpfulness. Very clearly 
dawned the conviction that, if one could but point out 
to the members of this waiting company some ' way,' 
' something to do, which would square well with their 
practical business sense of things, instant and un- 
measured would be their response.' " 

The quotation emphasizes the work of the Quakers 
of 1693, for they did not ask nor did they so much as 
think of what would square with practical business 
sense. There is not a word in their manifesto, nor was 
there a thought in the heart of one of them, about the 
'-'■ Impolicy of the Slave-trade." And they were fol- 
lowed by many others who refused to entertain busi- 
ness considerations, but asked solely what was right. 

The story of the Boston slaver, who, in 1645, robbed 
an African village by force of arms of its inhabitants, 
was told in open court because the slaver captain quar- 
relled with the ship's owners. On hearing it, one of the 
magistrates, Richard Saltonstall, declared that the 
master and his mate had been guilty of murder, man- 
stealing, and Sabbath-breaking, all crimes ^^ capital 
hy the law of God^ This was the first time that a 
man was accused in open court, on United States soil, 
of a capital offence because he had stolen negroes in 
Africa. It was the first of tlie long series of slave- 
trials wherein the insolent slaver was let go on techni- 
calities, the Courts deciding that they had no jurisdic- 
tion over crimes committed by citizens of the colony 
when on the coast of Africa. 

The next court case worth mention here came up 
in 1767. In 1727 the British planters of the West 
Indies who came to England bringing slaves for 
personal attendants began to have trouble through 



THE EAKLY WORK FOR EXTIEPATION 101 

the efforts of the slaves to escape service. The ne- 
groes, seeing the relative freedom and comfort of the 
white servants of England, ran away. For a time the 
masters had merely to find the negroes to recover them, 
but eventually it was noised among the negroes that, 
under the laws of England, every human being who 
had been baptized in the Established Church was free. 
Thereat every negro made haste to get baptized. 

The law was plain in letter and spirit, but the Crown 
Attorney and the Solicitor-General, at the request of 
certain slaveowners, wrote an opinion saying that bap- 
tism of a slave could not divest the slave-owner of any 
property right. That opinion served as law for nearly 
forty years. 

But in 1765 a Barbadoes planter named David Lisle 
came to Loudon bringing a negro slave named Jona- 
than Strong with him, and took lodgings in Wapping. 
Lisle abused Strong in shocking fashion and then 
turned him into the street, as he would have turned a 
worthless dog, to die. 

At that time a Dr. William Sharp lived in Wap- 
ping, and he gave much time to charity. In some way 
the negro Strong found his way to Sharp's office. 
Sharp heard his story and sent him to a hospital, 
where he was cured. Now, Dr. Sharp had a brother, 
one Granville Sharp, "born at Durham, England, 
November 10, 1735. His early education was limited. 
In 1750 he was apprenticed to a i^rie/irZ— afterward to 
an Independent— and subsequently to a Romanist." 
The story of the negro Strong appealed to Granville, 
who after he left the hospital obtained a situation for 
him where all went well with him until one day in 1767 
his old master saw him, and at once decided to take 



IQ2 THE A.MEi;iCA.\ SLAVE-TKADE 

possession of him again. To tliis end lie had the slave 
kidnapped, and then sold him to one John Kerr for 
£30. 

Although held in prison, Strong found means to send 
for friends, and Granville Sharp v^^ent to the Lord 
Mayor, Sir Robert Kite, "and entreated him to send 
for Strong, and to hear his case." 

Accordingly the case was heard, and Strong was 
discharged from custody on the ground that he had 
been kidnapped— that is, really, on a technical plea. 
Sharp freed Strong, but this case established no prin- 
ciple worth mention, and the story is told chiefly be- 
cause the work of Sharp in the case was his first effort 
in behalf of the negro race, and great things were to 
follow through his later efforts. 

Straightway Sharp found his hands full of the work 
of liberating slaves. So let us look his work in the 
face. It was nothing more nor less than an attack 
on property legally obtained and legally held. It was 
a work that would not "square with the business 
sense " of anybody. It is, therefore, but justice to the 
man to let him say here what the faith was that 
moved him to this extraordinary career. In a letter 
to Lord Carysport he said : 

"This is the compendium or sum total of all mi^" poli- 
tics, so that I include them in a very small compass. 
I am thoroughly convinced that Right ought to be 
adopted and maintained, on all occasions, without 
regard to consequences either probable or possible.'' '' 

This was the first statement made by an abolitionist 
of what the abolitionists called " the higher law." 

In November, 17G9, Charles Stewart, a Virginia 
planter, brought a slave named James Somerset to 



THE EARLY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION 103 

England. Somerset ran away ; was recaptured, and 
was placed on the ship Mary and Ann to be carried 
to Jamaica and sold. On learning this fact Sharp 
took the negro from the ship on the usual writ, and 
it was agreed that the case should turn on the broad 
question "Whether an African slave coming into 
England becomes free." 

That was a trial to stir the kingdom, for it was an 
open attack not alone on the planters of distant col- 
onies, but on the whole foreign commerce of the na- 
tion that had been developed, nurtured, improved, 
and brought to the leading place on the sea through 
the profits of the slave-trade. Worse yet, from a 
business point of view, it was an attack upon many 
interests ashore. The distilleries that made rum, the 
factories that made ropes, sails, and other ship fit- 
tings, even the whole industry of Manchester that 
turned out cloths for the African trade — all these 
were interested in the success of the slavers. 

The wealth of the nation and the power of society 
gathered on one side. On the other side stood a tim- 
orous negro slave and Granville Sharp. Lord Mans- 
field in his robes presided. 

For six months— from January to June, 1772, inclu- 
sive—blind Justice held the scales aloft in that court 
while learned counsel heaped this side and that with 
lore and statute bald, and strove w^ith fierce as well as 
pleading breath to sway the poised beam. And then 
he who stood for the oppressed, rising above the ob- 
scuring, tape-bound "chaos of formulas," asked in a 
voice that was heard in spite of clamor : 

" Shall the Right prevail in England ? " 

When those words were heard a hush fell upon all 



IQ4: THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

in that court, as if God had spoken. And then Jus- 
tice raised her sword, and, while the timorous slave 
and the airogant master listened, the justice who was 
appointed to speak said : 

"Immemorial usage preserves the memory of pos- 
itive law long after all traces of the occasion, reason, 
authority, and time of its introduction are lost ; and 
in a case so odious as that of the condition of slaves, 
must be taken strictly (tracing the subject to natural 
principles, the claim of slavery never can be sup- 
ported). The power claimed by this return never was 
in use here. We cannot say the cause set forth by 
this return is allowed or approved of by the laws of 
this kingdom, and therefore the man must be dis- 
charged." 

That was said on Monday, June 22, 1772. From 
that day slave-traders lost England as a landing-place 
—lost her waters even as ports of call while their 
human cargoes were on board. The slave-trade had 
been actually restricted regardless of business consid- 
erations. 

Not only did the case of Somerset serve to restrict 
the territory of the slave-traders ; the stir it created 
in public talk was of tremendous effect. For it 
should be recalled that under the laws of England 
and of the colonies in those days it was libellous to 
tell the truth in public print about the ill-treatment a 
slave might receive from his master, unless, indeed, 
the story of it were first told in open court during a 
trial involving the matter. The cases which Gran- 
ville Sharp bi'ought into court enabled the masses of 
the English-speaking people who held no slaves to 
learn lawfully how slaves were treated by slave-own- 



THE EAELY WORK FOR EXTIRPATION 105 

ers, and this set tliein to considering whether or not 
slave-owning was right. 

Granville Sharp, in fighting the battle of an unfort- 
unate negro, prepared the way in England for the 
discussion of slavery and the slave-trade on their 
merits. The voiceless negro through him appealed to 
the justice and humanity of the dominant race. 

In America no such appeal as that was heard, but a 
demand was made there for universal liberty, and it 
was heard around the world because emphasized by 
the thunder of cannon. 

When the colonists united to oppose British op- 
pression, the talk about slavery and slaves, which 
had reference to their own condition, turned their 
thoughts to the unfortunate negro slaves, and on 
Thursday, October 20, 1774, they signed an agree- 
ment that they w^ould "not purchase any slave im- 
ported after the first day of December next ; after 
which time we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, 
and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will 
we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manu- 
factures to those who are concerned in it." 



CHAPTER X 

THE SLAVERS OUTLAWED 

British Abolitionists and Their Work— After a Crusade of only 
Twenty Years, They Outlawed a Trade that, from a Busi- 
ness Point of View, had been the most Profitable in the 
United Kingdom— The Slave-trade and the American 
Constitution— Inauguration of the System of Compromises 
that Led to the Civil War— Slave-trade Legislation of the 
States— The Act of March 2, 1807. 

Although the British - American colonies, from 
Massacliusetts to Georgia, had become the United 
States of America before anything was done through 
a love of humanity for the legal abolition of the traffic, 
it is necessary, for the purposes of this history, to con- 
sider the progress of the trade, and of its opponents, 
very much as if no separation had taken place be- 
tween the colonies and the mother countr3^ 

Although the notable decision that right should 
prevail in England, as far as the negro Somerset was 
concerned, w^as made in 1772, it w^as not until 1787 
that a " Society for the Abolition of the African Slave- 
trade," was formed in London. However, an aboli- 
tion association, or committee without special organi- 
zation, was formed as early as 1783. The immediate 
cause of its formation was the story of the slaver 
Zong already related. 

The lirst meeting of the committee was held July 7, 

106 



THE SLAVEES OUTLAWED 107 

1783, "to consider what steps thej should take for the 
relief and liberation of the Negro slaves in the West 
Indies, and for the discouragement of the Slave-trade 
on the coast of Africa." The result of the agitation 
of this private committee was the formation on May 
22, 1787, of the "Society for the Abolition of the 
African Slave-trade," of which Granville Sharp was 
the chairman, and Thomas Clarkson was, next to 
Sharp, the most active member. In Parliament Will- 
iam Wilberforce became the champion of the society, 
chiefly through the work of Clarkson. Of the stand- 
ing of the supporters of the trade we have a sufficient 
indication in the fact that their leader was His Koyal 
Highness the Duke of Clarence, afterward William IV. 

How the society held meetings and published ap- 
peals, and how the slavers were forced to reply but 
failed to show convincing arguments, cannot be told 
here. But in the meantime David Hartley, a member 
of Parliament from Hull, made a motion in the House, 
in 1776, "That the slave-trade is contrary to the laws 
of God and the rights of man." In support of this 
resolution he laid on the table of the House some of 
the irons used in securing slaves on the slave-ships. 
Sir George Saville seconded the motion, but, of course, 
it failed even of a respectful hearing. 

In 1783 an effort was made to regulate the slave- 
trade, and it was then the abolition committee began 
its work. The bill of 1783 failed, but because of the 
continually increasing agitation by the abolitionists 
"the King by an order in council, dated February 
11th, 1788, directed that a committee of the Privy 
Council should sit as a board of trade ' to take into 
their consideration the present state of the African 



;108 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

trade, particularly as far as related to the practice and 
manner of purchasing or obtaining slaves on the coast 
of Africa, and the importation or sale thereof " in the 
markets of the West. 

On May 9, 1788, the first real discussion of the slave 
trade was heard in Parliament. Mr. Pitt moved a reso- 
lution to the effect that a full discussion of the trade 
be had in the next session, and his motion prevailed. 

However, Sir William Dolben was not satisfied to 
allow the session to close without doing something to 
relieve the slaves, and on May 21, 1788, asked leave to 
bring in a bill which was designed " only to limit the 
number of persons to be put on board to the tonnage 
of the vessel which was to carry them, in order to 
prevent them from being crowded too closely to- 
gether ; to secure them good and sufficient provisions, 
and to take cognizance of other matters which related 
to their health and accommodation ; and this only till 
Parliament could enter into the general merits of the 
question." 

The slavers at once protested that any restriction 
would ruin the trade, but meantime Mr. Pitt had sent 
Captain Parry, of the Royal Navy, to Liverpool to 
measure the slavers there, and his measurements 
showed that many slavers had made enormous prof- 
its where fewer slaves had been carried than the con- 
templated bill would permit. It was now that the 
people learned how little space was allowed to the 
slaves crowded into the slaver's hold. 

On June, 17, 1788, the bill passed the House of Com- 
mons by a vote of fifty-six to five. By its terms 
slavers were to be allowed to carry " five men to every 
three tons in every ship under one hundred and fifty 



THE SLAYERS OUTLAWED 109 

tons burthen [according to the custom-house measure- 
ment] which had the space of five feet between the 
decks, and three men to two tons in every vessel be- 
yond one hundred and fifty tons which had equal 
accommodation in point of height between the decks." 

In the House of Lords, in spite of increased oppo- 
sition, the bill was amended to compel the carrying of 
regularly educated surgeons on every slaver and to 
give bounties to slaver captains who lost no more than 
two per centum of the slaves during the Middle Pas- 
sage. Finally, on Thursday, July 10, 1788, " the first 
bill that ever put fetters upon that barbarous and de- 
structive monster, The Slave-trade," was sent to the 
King. And on the next day the King signed it and it 
became the law of the realm. 

The Parliamentary investigation of the trade fol- 
lowed, and this gave the public a full knowledge of 
its horrors. As already said, these horrors grew up 
only because of the blind greed of the slavers. They 
might perhaps, by giving the slaves good passenger 
accommodations, have long delaj'-ed the fate that wag 
at hand. But blind they were. On April 27, 1792, 
Parliament passed a resolution by a vote of one hun- 
dred and fifty-one to one hundred and thirty- two for 
the abolition of the trade in 1796. In the House of 
Lords it failed. 

In 1793 the abolitionists failed in the Commons as 
well as the House of Lords. In 1794 the measure was 
carried in the Commons but lost in the upper house. 
Then an effort was made to keep British ships from 
supplying foreigners, and that failed. A supreme 
effort seems to have been made in 1799, but that failed 
also, and thereafter nothing of importance was done in 



IIQ THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Parliament until 1804, which was fixed upon for re- 
newed exertions. A bill then passed the Commons, 
but was thrown out by the Lords. 

However, in 1805 " an order in council prohibited the 
importation of negroes to the newly conquered colo- 
nies of the British Crown." Followng this "Sir A. 
Pigott, the Attorney-General, as an officer of the 
Crown, brought in a bill on March 31, 1806, the first 
object of which was to give effect" to that order. The 
second object was " to prohibit British subjects from 
being engaged in importing slaves into the colonies of 
any foreign power." A third object was "to prohibit 
British subjects and British capital from being em- 
ployed in carrying on a slave-trade in foreign ships," 
and to prevent foreign slavers fitting out in British 
ports. This bill, "the first which dismembered this 
cruel trade," passed the Commons at once, and the 
Lords on May 7th, when it was signed by the King. 
The triumph of Humanity was at hand. Parliament 
was dissolved in November, 1806, but public opinion 
had so far changed that Roscoe, a noted abolitionist, 
could be sent from Liverpool, the chief slaver port, 
to the new Parliament that was soon convened. It 
was a short-lived Parliament, but a bill was passed 
declaring that no vessel should clear out for slaves 
from any port within the British dominions after May 
1, 1807, and that no slave should be landed in the colo- 
nies after March 1, 1808. It received the King's signa- 
ture on March 25, 1807. The fight that was organized 
in 1787, when the abolitionists formed their society for 
outlawing the trade, was won. 

This was not the first time that the trade had been 
prohibited by legal enactment in an English-speaking 



THE SLAYEES OUTLAWED m 

state, but it was tlie first time such a law had been 
made from humane motives only. 

To consider the course of events on our side of the 
Atlantic, it appears that " the slave-trade was hardly 
touched upon in the Congress of the Confederation." 
It was mentioned only in connection with " the count- 
ing of slaves as well as of freemen in the apportion- 
ment of taxes;" but when the articles were finally 
adopted a law was enacted by which fugitive slaves, 
captured on the sea, or on the beach below high-water 
mark, were to be free unless claimed by the owner ! 

From the adoption of the articles of confederation 
until it was found that those articles were utterly in- 
adequate to their proposed object of holding the States 
together as a nation, the slave-trade was not an object of 
national legislation. But w^ien the convention which 
adopted the present Constitution met, the subject 
of the slave-trade had a fair discussion, though it must 
be said t-hat no one foresaw the extent to which slavery 
was to grow. On the contrary, the people as a whole 
believed that it was a dying institution, destined 
speedily to take itself from the nation. 

A fair examination of the discussions in this conven- 
tion shows that the trade w^ould have been prohibited 
in the Constitution but for the delegates from Georgia 
and South Carolina. Delegates from Delaware, Mary- 
land, and Virginia all denounced the traffic, even 
though all of them were slave-holders. Mason, of Vir- 
ginia, called it "infernal." Georgia w^as ruled by 
the feeling in favor of slavery that had come down 
from the days when her financial interests had suf- 
fered for want of slaves under the proprietary gov- 
ernment. 



;^;[2 THE AMEEIGAX SLAVE-TRADE 

In South Carolina tlie people were probably in- 
fluenced chiefly by what may be called the States' 
rights doctrine. They did not then need imported 
slaves. In fact, of their own will, they prohibited 
the traffic temporarily afterward. It was, appar- 
ently, the principle of surrendering the control of 
the trade to the general government to wliicli they 
objected. 

"When the two States refused to join the confederacy, 
if the slave-trade were definitely prohibited, Roger 
Sherman, of Connecticut, said : " It is better to let the 
Southern States import slaves than to part with those 
States." 

Herein was laid the foundation of the national legis- 
lation on slavery that was continued until it culmi- 
nated in the civil war. It is certain that but for the 
compromises then inaugurated we should have had 
two nations instead of one formed from the original 
scolonies. 

f In view of this undisputed fact, and in view of the 
history of the nation since that date, what does the 
reader think of the assertion of principle made by 
Granville Sharp, when he said : 

^' Rigid ouglit to he adopted and maintained on all 
occasions, witliout regard to consequences, eitlier 
probable or possible f " 
\ , And here let it be remembered that the slave ques- 
^tion was discussed in the Constitutional Convention 
chiefly from an "economic standpoint," and that the 
word " slave "was carefully excluded from the instru- 
ment/or tJie saJce of appearance. 

Not to dwell too long on a topic that is humili- 
ating to every patriot, we find that the slave-trade 



THE SLAVEKS OUTLAWED 113 

matter was disposed of as follows in the Constitu- 
tion : 

Article I. Section 9. The Migration or Importation of 
such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think 
proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress 
prior to the Year one thousand, eight hundred and eight, but 
a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not ex- 
ceeding ten dollars for each Person. 

The opponents of the trade provided for a date 
when the trade might be prohibited, and they saw 
that a negro was described as a "Person," not as an 
animal or real estate. This was something. People 
had been found to deny that a negro was a man and a 
brother, though the fact that he was a half-brother to 
some of the leading white citizens of the nation was 
patent enough. 

Meantime the States were able, both under the con- 
federation and under the Constitution, to deal with the 
slave-trade and slavery as they pleased. The State 
legislation was based chiefly on economic considera- 
tions, but the effect of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence is also seen. New York, as a State, appears to 
have taken the lead in prohibitory legislation. On 
February 28, 1788, she enacted that no slave should be 
imported within her boundaries, nor should any be 
purchased in the State for export. The penalty was 
£100. 

Massachusetts followed, on March 25, 1788, and 
prohibited to her citizens the African slave-trade. 
There was nothing in the act to prevent carrjdng slaves 
from any other continent. 

Pennsylvania four days later was more sweeping, for 
8 



114 THE AMEKICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

it prohibited the trade " to, from, or between Europe, 
Asia, Africa, or America, or any places or countries 
whatever." 

South Carolina, during this year, prohibited the 
trade for a period (until January 1, 1793). Delaware 
followed with prohibition on February 3, 1789. 

On May 13, 1789, it was proposed in Congress to tax 
the importation of slaves at $10 a head. The national 
government needed money badly, but this proposal 
to share in the profits of the trade was never carried. 

The first real stej) toward a national restriction of 
the trade under the Constitution was taken on March 
23, 1790. The abolitionists had been stirring up the 
menagerie — if one may be allowed the only term graph- 
ically descriptive of the members in their ordinary 
motives and doings in connection with disagreeable 
topics. Petition after petition on the subject of 
slavery and the trade had been sent in, and Congress 
had continued the policy of evasion inaugurated at 
the Constitutional Convention. But on that date the 
House declared "that Congress have authority to 
restrain the citizens of the United States from carry- 
ing on the African trade, for the purpose of supplying 
foreigners with slaves, and of providing, by proper 
regulations, for the humane treatment, during their 
passage, of slaves imported by the said citizens into 
the States admitting such importations." Further, 
"that Congress have authority to prohibit foreigners 
from fitting out vessels in any port of the United 
States for transporting persons from Africa to an}^ 
foreign port." 

The vote was twentj^-nine to twenty-five, and even 
that was obtained only because the same resolutions 



THE SLAVEES OUTLAWED 115 

declared that " Congress have no authority to interfere 
in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of 
them within the States," and that "the migration or 
importation of such persons as any of the States now 
existing shall think proper to admit cannot be pro- 
hibited by Congress prior to the year one thousand, 
eight hundred and eight," 

/ Four years passed before anything was done under 
these declared powers. The ills of the slave-trade as 
described by the witnesses before the English Parlia- 
ment became widely known in this country, and the 
abolitionists, led by the persistent Quakers, kept nag- 
ging Congress with petitions for the abolition of 
slavery, but Congress went on, brushing these aside, 
until the shadow of the storm raised in Hayti by 
Toussaint L'Ouverture darkened the southern horizon. 
The slaves of the great island just east of Cuba arose, 
and in a day, so to speak, had asserted and maintained 
the principle that all men are born free and equal. 
Their rising, like that of the oppressed in France, was 
marked with the violence that power suddenly released 
from restraint always shows. Many and frightful 
were the deeds of bloodshed and rapine, and the 
thought of these and of the real cause of them made 
the white American legislators cower. 

" A Quaker petition for a law against the transport 
traffic in slaves was received without a murmur in 
1794, and on March 22 of that year the first national 
act against the slave-trade became a law." 

The student finds, as he reads through the great mass 
of American works on slavery printed since that day, 
that many of the writers announce, with a flourish of 
Old Glory, that the United States was the first nation 



116 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

to prohibit the slave-trade. They think this act pro- 
hibited the trade. 

The truth is the act was merely " to prohibit the 
carrying on the Slave-trade /'ro?7^ the United States to 
any foreign place or couiitry^'' and to prohibit fitting 
out slavers here for a foreign country. It was merely 
an act in mild restraint of the trade — so mild, in fact, 
that it never injured the slavers to the extent of a 
dollar. 

Here the matter rested for six years — save only that 
by the act of April 3, 1798, " in relation to the Missis- 
sippi territory," to which the constitutional provision 
did not extend, the introduction of slaves was forbid- 
den, under severe penalties, and every slave imported 
contrary to the act was to be entitled to freedom. 
But in 1800 a petition of Pennsylvania free negroes for 
a revision of the laws relating to the slave-trade-, the 
fugitive slave law, and for gradual emancipation, once 
more stirred the House to fever heat. 

In the debate that followed, Dana, of Connecticut, 
declared that the petition contained "nothing but a 
farrago of the French metaphysics of liberty and 
equality." That from Connecticut ! 

Brown, of Rhode Island, said: "We want money; 
we want a navy •, we ought therefore to use the means 
to obtain it. . . . Why should we see Great Brit- 
ain getting all the slave-trade to themselves — why may 
not our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic ? " 

Congress, however, made it unlawful not only to fit 
out ships for the foreign slave-trade but to hold any 
interest, direct or indirect, in foreign slaver voyages. 
And serving on slavers was prohibited to American 
citizens. Naval vessels were directed to make prizes 



TUE SLAVEES OUTLAWED 117 

of any American slave-ships, and tlie guilty merchants 
and crews were to bear, on conviction, an imprison- 
ment of two years as well as a fine of $2,000 for a 
maximum penalty. The slaves were to be forfeited, 
but what was to be done with them was not said, al- 
though the captors were not to have them. 

It was still lawful to import slaves from Africa into 
any State permitting the trade. On February 28, 
1803, a bill became a law which provided for the for- 
feiture of any ship that should bring into any State, 
contrary to its laws, "any negro, mulatto, or other 
person of color." The ship-master violating this law 
was to be fined $1,000. Curiously enough, this law 
was passed on presentation of a petition from North 
Carolina. Some Haytian negroes had landed at Wil- 
mington, and the North Carolinians were frightened 
by the thought that the Hay tians were emissaries come 
to preach the Haytian ideas of liberty and equality. 

Nevertheless the great profits in cotton planting, 
after Whitney invented the cotton gin, and was robbed 
of his rights, caused a reaction in favor of the slave- 
trade. To obtain more negroes for the cotton-field, 
South Carolina repealed her law prohibiting slave im- 
ports. .' What South Carolina did openly, other States 
did sneakingly ; they smuggled slaves. 
' About that time the Louisiana Territory was under 
consideration in Congress, and msiny slaves were 
wanted there. Harper, of South Carolina, got a bill 
passed compelling the planters in Louisiana to import 
through " the limits of the United States ; " the practi- 
cal effect of the law being to make all slavers enter 
their cargoes at Charleston, after which they were at 
liberty to proceed to New Orleans. 



118 THE AMEIUCAN SLAVE-TEADE 

As a result of tliis opening of the traffic in South 
Carolina, two hundred and two ships brought 39,075 
slaves from Africa to Charleston during the years 1804 
to 1807, inclusive. According to the official returns of 
the custom house as gathered by Senator Smith, of 
that State, and reported to Congress, these ships were 
divided as follows : " From Connecticut, 1 ; Boston, 1 ; 
Norfolk, 2 ; Baltimore, 4 ; Rhode Island, 59 ; Charles- 
ton, 61; Sweden, 1; France, 3; Great Britain, 70." 
There were only sixty-one ships nominally hailing from 
Northern ports engaged in the trade. But when one 
looks to see who reaped the profits, it appears that of 
the consignees of these slavers "88 were natives of 
Rhode Island, 13 of Charleston, 10 of France, and 91 
of Great Britain." 

Rhode Island passed in October, 1787, an act to 
prevent the importation of slaves into her own terri- 
tory and to encourage the abolition of slavery in the 
State. Importation of slaves was prohibited under 
penalty of a fine of £100 per negro, and £1,000 per 
ship, but there was nothing in her legislation, or in 
any other legislation then extant, to prevent her ship- 
owners reaping the profits of the open trade to South 
Carolina.'! It was right hard work to induce legislators 
in those days to shut off absolutely a business where- 
in a man could make $90,000 profit in one round voy- 
age of a ship worth less than $10,000. 

However, as the year 1808 drew nigh, legislation of 
importance was had. Congress had assumed that it 
had the right to prohibit the trade beginning with that 
year, and President Jefferson in his message of De- 
cember 2, 1806, congratulated Congress "on the ap- 
proach of the period at which 3'ou may interpose 



THE SLAVEKS OUTLAWED HQ 

your authority constitutionally" to prohibit the slave- 
trade. The next day— December 3— Bradley, of Ver- 
mont, introduced the bill that became the act of 
March 2, 1807. 

The first part of it considered was the disposal of 
the slaves in vessels to be captured while attempting 
to bring slaves in— that the ship-owners would violate 
the law was taken as a matter of course. The anti- 
slavery men wanted the negroes so captured to be 
free, but were willing to have them indentured, even 
for life. This was asking more than could be ob- 
tained. The fear of having free blacks turned loose 
in slave-holding communities— the fear that the free 
blacks would incite insurrections was too strong. 

Of course there were moral objections to selling the 
slaves, but Congressman Joseph Clay declared '> mo- 
rality has nothing to do with this traffic. It must ap- 
pear to every man of common-sense that the question 
can be considered in a commercial point of view only." 
Worse yet. Congressmen were found to argue for the 
"decent appearance" of the statute book. They 
were drabs who feared detection, not the sin. 

Of course, in the state of civilization then prevail- 
ing the commercial consideration necessarily pre- 
vailed. The law (section 4), as at last passed, pro- 
vided that " neither the importer, nor any person or 
persons claiming under him, shall hold any right or 
title whatsoever" to any negro which might be capt- 
ured on a slaver coming to the United States, "but 
the same shall remain subject to any regulations," not 
contrar}^ to this act, which "the several States or 
Territories'' might make in the matter. 
So Congress in trying to stop the traffic provided 



120 THE AMEKICAN SLAVE-TRxVDE 

that the unfortunates brought from Africa should not 
regain the liberty they had lost through the work of 
land pirates. 

No slaves were smuggled into the Northern region. 
In the South some States passed no law on this matter, 
and in others the laws varied widely. The Alabama- 
Mississippi territory act of 1815 provided for the sale of 
the negroes by public auction, for cash, to the highest 
bidder, the informer to have half the proceeds of the 
sale, and the other half to go to the public treasury. 
How this law worked will appear later on. In North 
Carolina (law of 1816) one-lifth of such sales went to 
the informer. In Georgia the slaves, by the act of 
December 18, 1817, might be "sold, after giving sixty 
days' notice in a public gazette," or "if the society for 
the colonization of free persons of color . . . will 
undertake to transport them to Africa ... at the 
sole expense of said society, and shall likewise pay all 
expenses incurred by the State since they had been 
captured and condemned. His Excellency the Gov- 
ernor is authorized and requested to aid in promoting 
the benevolent views of said society." 

No national law regulating the disposal of such 
slaves as these was passed until after the war of 1812. 

Another matter considered in connection with this 
bill introduced on December 3, 1806, was the coastwise 
traffic between the States. The efforts to prohibit that 
failed ; but the law provided that no ship under forty 
tons should engage in it. There was no limit to the 
number of slaves that might be carried, although a 
voyage from the Chesapeake to New Orleans fre- 
quently lasted as long as one from Africa to the West 
Indies. 



THE SLAVERS OUTLAWED 121 

The penalties provided for the violation of this act 
included forfeiture of the ship " to the United States"; 
a fine of $20,000 to be imposed for fitting out a slaver ; 
a fine of $5,000 for aiding in the importation of slaves ; 
a fine of from $1,000 to $10,000, with imprisonment 
ranging from five to ten years, for taking slaves on 
board a ship from Africa or any other foreign country, 
and a fine of $800 for buying a smuggled slave. 

Furthermore, the President was authorized to " cause 
any of the armed vessels of the United States" to be 
employed " to cruise on any part of the coast of the 
United States" in search of smugglers. In case a nj^ 
such smuggler was captured the captain, on conviction, 
was to be imprisoned from two to four years, and fined 
not to exceed $10,000. The ship was to be forfeited 
as a prize to the naval ship. The negroes were to be 
delivered to the State authorities where the slaver 
prize found a port. 

This law has often been mentioned as the result of a 
great moral victory — and, of course, it did show some 
progress in American civilization ; but when the facts 
are considered we find that practically it was a mere 
dead-letter. 



CHAPTER XI 

TALES OF THE EARLIER SMUGGLERS 

A Slaver's Ferry Between Havana and the Florida Ports- 
Amelia Island as a Smugglers' Headquarters— The Bara- 
taria Pirates and the Smuggling Trade— Extent of the 
Illegal Traffic— A Georgia Governor who Left His Post to 
Become a Slave Smuggler. 

NoTiiiisrQ like a complete story of tlie smuggling 
traffic in slaves carried on along the coasts of the 
United States has ever been told, and none can be 
told, because of conditions that were very well stated 
by Congressman Lowndes, of South Carolina, in the 
House on February 14, 1804. " With navigable rivers 
running into the heart of it [his State], it was impos- 
sible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern breth- 
ren, who in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the 
authority of the general Government, have been en- 
gaged in this trade, from introducing them into the 
country. The law was completely evaded, and for the 
last year or two Africans were introduced into the 
country in numbers little short, I believe, of what 
they would have been had the trade been a legal 
one." 

The fling at New England ship-owners was entirely 
justified by the facts, but it will also be observed that 
citizens of South Carolina were the receivers of the 
goods stolen by the New England thieves. 

132 



TALES OF THE EAELIER SGVIUGGLEES 123 

Another popular Florida port was Pensacola. 
There was a regular slave-ferry between Havana and 
Pensacola in the days when Florida was Spanish ter- 
ritory. When General Jackson seized Pensacola in 
the spring of 1818, Colonel Brooke captured the 
slaver Constitution with eighty-four negroes on board, 
while Lieutenant McKeever, of the naval forces, capt- 
ured the Louisa and the Marino with twenty-three 
slaves between them. All these slaves were destined 
to the United States for a market. Considering the 
fact that three slavers were found in or near the port 
at one time, it is fair to suppose that at least one slaver 
a week was the average of arrivals. 

Congressman Mitchell estimated that 20,000 were 
smuggled in each year. In 1810 President Madison 
referred to the traffic and said he believed that "just 
and benevolent motives" would " be felt by Con- 
gress in devising further means of suppressing the 
evil." 

On January 22, 1811, Secretary of the Navy Paul 
Hamilton wrote to Captain H. G. Campbell, the com- 
manding naval officer at Charleston, S. C, saying: 
"I hear, not without great concern, that the law pro- 
hibiting the importation of slaves has been violated 
in frequent instances at St. Mary's (Ga.), since the gun- 
boats have been withdrawn from that station. . . . 
Hasten the equipment of the gunboats . . . and 
despatch them to St. Mary's with orders to use all 
practicable diligence." 

The extent of the trafiic here mentioned may be im- 
agined from what is said by the author of the "Voy- 
age of the Ship Two Friends,'^ who was in a position 
to learn some of the facts before he wrote his book. 



124 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

"During the existence of the impolitic intercourse act 
... so great was the trade [of all kinds] that three 
hundred sail of square-rigged vessels were seen at 
one time in the Spanish waters waiting for cargoes." 
Amelia Island was then probably the most populous 
slave-station in the world. 

Another notable slave-station on the borders of the 
United States previous to the war of 1812 was that 
established at Barataria, southwest of New Orleans, 
where Jean Lafitte ruled. Lafitte's piratical cruisers 
captured many slavers and brought their cargoes to 
Barataria. The bayous between that and the Missis- 
sippi were admirably suited for smugglers. They 
smuggled all kinds of goods, but negroes paid best of 
all. The operations became so bold that the national 
Government sent Commodore D, T. Patterson, of the 
nav}'', and Colonel George T. Ross, of the army, with 
forces that destroyed the settlement. The vessels and 
other property captured sold for $50,000, and this sum 
was distributed among our men who had part in the 
expedition. That so great a sum was realized at 
forced sale for the property shows how extensive the 
Barataria smuggling business was. 

After the war of 1812 the people chiefly concerned 
in the Barataria colony went to Galveston Island and 
there established what they called the Government of 
the new State of Texas. This was done in 1817 but 
the exact date is not recorded. The ruling spirit was 
"Commodore Louis Aur}^" who had held a commis- 
sion in the New Grenada navy, but was in 1817 act- 
ing under a commission issued by Herrero, an agent 
of the Mexican republic. Aury called himself the 
Commodore of the allied fleet in tlie war withSpain. 



TALES OF THE EARLIER S-MUGGLERS 125 

He set up a court of admiralty, and before this court 
he brought and condemned such vessels as his " allied 
fleet" could capture. To dispose of the property thus 
obtained he adopted the smuggling tactics of the Bar- 
atarians, and he found plenty of men in New Orleans 
ready to assist him. 

On April 5, 1817, Aury removed his establishment 
down to Matagorda, and thence to Amelia Island, 
Fla., where the smuggling operations became so 
bold and extensive as to attract the attention of the 
whole nation. 

In fact the business became so profitable that Gov- 
ernor David B. Mitchell, of Georgia, resigned his hon- 
orable office and became the United States agent of the 
Creek Indians in order that he might, as he supposed, 
safely participate in the smuggling traffic. The Creek 
agency was in the midst of the wilderness then lying 
between the Georgia settlements and the new planta- 
tions of the Louisiana purchase. Mitchell had the 
slaves taken by obscure trails to his headquarters at 
the agency, and he intended to distribute them thence 
to the Louisiana plantations. He supposed that the 
routes to be followed, the location of the agency, and 
his personal influence combined would enable him to 
do a wholesale smuggling business in perfect safety. 
But he was detected, and lost money as well as his 
honor. The facts in this matter can be found in the 
"American State Papers"— Miscellaneous— Vol. II., p. 
957. It seems necessary to give the authority for this 
story lest it seem wholly incredible. 

The documents in this case (p. 962) show that "prime 
fellows were offered at Amelia at $250 ; ordinary from 
$175 to $200." Therefore the net profit in smuggling 



126 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

slaves into the United States varied between $350 and 
$500 per head. 

Details of the smugglers' methods are to be had in 
sufficient number, but the story of one trip described 
by Drake may suffice for all. 

"Thekaffle, under charge of negro drivers, was to 
strike up the Escambia River, and thence cross the 
boundary into Georgia, where some of our wild Afri- 
cans were mixed with various squads of native blacks 
and driven inland till sold off, singly or by couples, 
on the road. . . . The Spanish jDossessions were 
thriving on this inland exchange of negroes. . . . 
Florida was a sort of nursery for slave-breeders, and 
many American citizens grew rich by trafficking in 
Guinea negroes and smuggling them continually, in 
small parties, through the Southern United States. At 
the time I mention, the business was a lively one." 



CHAPTER XII 
SLAVERS DECLARED PIRATES 

Fines and Imprisonment with Rewards for Informers were not 
Sufficient to Stop Slave Smuggling — Workings of the Pro- 
hibitive Legislation Illustrated by the Doings of the Knife- 
Inventor Bowie and the Pirate Lafitte — Slaves Sold by the 
Pound — Influences that Led to the Piracy Act. 

With the smoke of the Amelia Island camp-fires in 
their eyes and nostrils our national legislators under- 
took the task of making the dead law of 1807-08 a live 
one. Both houses brought in bills, but adroit politi- 
cians were found in Congress to see that the power of 
the bills was weakened, if not destroyed, and in this 
case these politicians succeeded in ruining the bill 
altogether. 

The bill as passed was entitled " An act in addition 
to ' an act to prohibit the introduction [importation] 
of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction 
of the United States, from and after the first day of 
January in the year of our Lord 1808,' and to repeal 
certain parts of the same." It was approved on April 
20, 1818. 

It might with truth have been entitled "An act to 
promote treachery among smugglers." Congress sup- 
posed that by appealing to the cupidity of the lawless, 
and offering a cash premium to those smugglers who 

127 



TX- 



128 THE AMERICAN . SLAYE-TEADE 

would inform on their associates, the morality of the 
smuggling region would be improved. 

To show how the new law differed from that of 1807, 
it may be said that the old provided (see sec. 2) that 
"every such ship" engaged in importing slaves "shall 
be forfeited to the United States." The law of 1818 
[sec. 1] provided "forfeiture, in any district in which 
it may be found ; one-half thereof to the use of the 
United States, and tlie other half to him or them who 
shall prosecute the same to effect." 

But while the act was ineffective, as a whole, one 
section (8) is of interest because it clearly shows a ten- 
dency in Congress at that time to extirpate the trade. 
Therein it was provided that in "all prosecutions 
under this act the defendant or defendants shall be 
holden to prove" that the slave " which he or they 
shall be charged with having brought into the United 
States, or with purchasing, selling, or otherwise dis- 
posing of" the same, " was brought into the United 
States at least five years previous to the commence- 
ment of such prosecution, or was not brought in, 
holden, or purchased, or otherwise disposed of con- 
trary to the provisions of this act." To throw the 
burden of proof on the accused was a novelty in 
American legislation. 

The next year Congress acknowledged this law to 
be inefficient by passing the act of March 3, 1819. 
AVhile this was in the House of Representatives, Nel- 
son, of Virginia, had a clause inserted providing the 
death penalty for engaging in the traffic. This pen- 
alty was struck out in the Senate. Du Bois notes 
here that Congress was already beginning to divide 
on party as well as geograpliical lines when slavery 



SLAVERS DECLARED PIRATES 129 

was to be considered. The bill of 1818 was favored, 
he says, "by the South, the Senate, and the Demo- 
crats." The law of 1819 was the bill of the North, 
the House, and by the as yet undeveloped but grow- 
ing Whig Party. 

Under the act of 1819 the President, in section 1, 
was "authorized, whenever he shall deem it expe- 
dient, to cause any of the armed vessels of the United 
States to be employed to cruise on any of the coasts 
of the United States or territories thereof, or of the 
coasts if Africa or elsewhere . . . to seize " Amer- 
ican slavers. The proceeds from the sale of seized 
slavers were to be divided between the nation and the 
naval crew, and a bounty of $25 for each slave so 
taken was given in addition. 

The President was also authorized to appoint an 
agent to reside on the coast of Africa (Liberia) to re- 
ceive and care for the negroes when captured. 

Plain citizen informers were to have half the 
proceeds of fines and $50 cash bonus for each 
slave captured in the course of smuggling opera- 
tions. 

On the other hand, in the interests of the slavers, 
it was provided (sec. 5) that a naval officer must 
"bring the vessel and her cargo, for adjudication, into 
some port of the State or Territory to which such ves- 
sel so captured shall belong, if he can ascertain the 
same." This section was added on the motion of 
Congressman Butler, of Louisiana, who said he had 
"a due regard for the interests of the State that he 
represented." The slave-ships owned in New Orleans, 
for instance, were to be sent to New Orleans for ad- 
judication. Section 4 provides also that "it shall be 
9 



130 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

ascertained by verdict of a jury" whether a ship had 
violated the law. 

To show how this law operated we may quote a 
passage from the life of the noted James Bowie, of 
New Orleans, who gave his name to the famous sheath- 
knife. Bowie, with his brother, Rezin Bowie, and two 
others of like adventurous minds, formed a company, 
and entered into treaty with Lafitte, who was still a 
chief spirit among the smugglers in the Gulf region. 
Lafitte "sold them sound and likely blacks off his 
slave-ships at the rate of a dollar a pound. That made 
the average price something like $140 the head. In 
the open market the blacks would fetch from $500 to 
$1,000 each." Having purchased the slaves, the or- 
dinary course was to sneak them through bayous to 
any purchaser they could find. But taking advantage 
of the law that gave half the proceeds of the sale of 
the negroes to the informer, besides a bounty of $50 a 
head, they often informed on each other, under false 
names, and had the slaves condemned and sold by 
due process of law. At the sale no competitors ap- 
peared, because it was fully understood in the com- 
munity that Bowie was evading the law, and, slaves 
being in demand, public sentiment supported the 
transaction. The Bowies made a good profit in these 
transactions, the Government officials got fat fees, and 
planters got the slaves at market prices. 

"x\ltogether the company realized a profit of some 
$65,000 within a couple of years. But the business 
involved such mummery and flummery of false names, 
pretended disguises, and pretended seizures that the 
Bowies pretty soon tired of it." They were a rough 
lot, but they were not sneaks. They proved, long be- 



SLAYEES DECLARED PIRATES 131 

fore the words were written, that "it is physically im- 
possible for a brave man to make money the chief 
object of his thoughts." 

When Congress reassembled in December after pass- 
ing the act of March 3, 1819, the slave-trade came up for 
further consideration. The colonization society that es- 
tablished Liberia, of which the story is to be told, had, 
by its activity in various ways, increased the public 
knowledge of the evils of the slave-trade. Further- 
more, it was able to reach the slave-holders for two 
reasons. First, it was pledged not to interfere with 
American slavery. Second, it was formed for the 
specific purpose of removing the slave-holder's chief 
eyesore, the free negro, out of the United States. 

Undoubtedly there were in the United States many 
people who were opposed to the trade because of prin- 
ciple. But the student cannot overlook the fact that 
the feeling against the trade was able to make head- 
way because there was no financial interest in slaves 
or slavers at the North, outside of a few ports, and at 
the South there were increasing numbers of slave-own- 
ers who had slaves to sell through the natural increase 
of their holdings. The fact that the coastwise trade 
had demanded consideration in the previous legislation 
is significant. Virginia was already the mother of an 
export trade in slaves. To prohibit absolutely the 
importation of wild Africans was to " bull the market " 
for the planters who found more profit in breeding 
slaves than in cultivating the soil. 

Meantime the privateers, so-called, of the Latin- 
American republics had made alarming attacks on 
our unarmed merchant ships. Pirates swarmed over 
the West India seas, and their doings were justly be* 



232 THE AMERICAN SLxWE-TRADE 

lieved to be, in many cases, cliargeable to the slave- 
trade. The slavers turned ph-ates, and the pirates 
turned slavers, as occasion warranted. 

In short, from good motives and bad, a bill was 
brought in that became the act of May 15, 1820. 
Because it provided the death penalty for partici- 
pation in the slave-trade, the sections pertaining to 
the trade shall be given in full : 

And he it further enacted, That, if any citizen of ^the United 
States, being of the crew or ship's company of any foreign 
ship or vessel engaged in the slave-trade, or any person what- 
ever being of the crew or ship's company of any ship or vessel 
owned in whole or in part, or navigated for, or in behalf of, 
any citizen or citizens of the United States, shall land, from any 
such ship or vessel, and, on any foreign shore, seize any negro 
or mulatto, not held to service or labor by the laAvs of either of 
the States or Territories of the United States, with intent to 
make such negro or mulatto a slave, or shall decoy, or forcibly 
bring or carry, or shall receive, such negro or mulatto on 
board any such ship or vessel, with intent as aforesaid, such 
citizen or person shall be adjudged a pirate, and, on convic- 
tion thereof, before the Circuit Court of the United States 
for the disti-ict wherein he may be brought or found, shall 
sufifer death. 

And be it further enacted, That, if any citizen of the United 
States, being of the crew or ship's company of any foreign 
ship or vessel engaged in the slave-trade, or any person what- 
ever, being of the crew or ship's company of any ship or vessel 
owned wholly or in part, or navigated for, or in behalf of, any 
citizen or citizens of the United States, shall forcibly confine, 
or detain, or aid or abet in forcibly confining, or detaining, 
on board such ship or vessel, any negro or mulatto not held 
to service by the laws of either of the States or Territories of 
the United States, with intent to make such negro or mulatto 
a slave, or shall, on board any such ship or vessel, offer or 
attempt to sell, as a slave, any negro or mulatto not held to 



SLAVERS DECLARED PIRATES 133 

service as aforesaid, or shall, on the high seas, or anywhere 
on tide-water, transfer or deliver over, to any other ship or 
vessel, any negro or mulatto not held to service as aforesaid, 
with intent to make such negro or mulatto a slave, or shall 
land or deliver on shore, from on board any such ship or 
vessel, any such negro or mulatto, with intent to make sale 
of, or, having previously sold, such negro or mulatto as a 
slave, such citizen or person shall be adjudged a pirate, and, 
on conviction thereof before the Circuit Court of the United 
States for the district wherein he shall be brought or found, 
shall suffer death. 

An an expression of the sentiment of the nation as 
a whole at that time, regarding the slave-trade, that 
law seems unmistakable. But that was not all that 
Congress did to show the determination of the nation 
to suppress the slave-trade. On May 12th a resolution 
passed the House as follows : 

" That the President of the United States be requested to 
negotiate with all the Governments where Ministers of the 
United States are or shall be accredited, on the means of 
effecting an entire and immediate abolition of the slave- 
trade." 

The law was comprehensive and just. Though lim- 
ited in life to two years, it was made perpetual by a 
joint resolution on January 30, 1823. This resolution 
looked to a wide-spread and thorough enforcement of 
the law. It was a good resolution. 



CHAPTER XIII 

INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION FOR SUPPRESSING 
THE TRADE 

Work of British Diplomacy among the Continental Powers — 
When Spain agreed to Abolish the Slave-trade for a 
Money Consideration and Failed to Fulfil Her Contract — 
A Free Offer of " Sailors' Rights" which We Refused to 
Accept — A Shameful Record in American Slaver Legisla- 
tion — The Ashburton Treaty. 

Meantime in Europe, in 1804, an act in Denmark, 
abolishing the slave-trade, which had been passed in 
1792, came into operation. In 1806 Great Britain pro- 
posed to the United States a treaty "of amity, com- 
merce, and navigation" under which the two nations 
were to " agree to use their best endeavors to procure 
the co-operation of other Powers for the final and com- 
plete abolition of a trade so repugnant to the principles 
of justice and humanitj^" but the United States re- 
fused to join. 

Finding that the act of 1807 was ineffective, the 
British legislators in 1811 declared participation in the 
trade by any British subject a felony punishable wnth 
fourteen years' transportation. 

On March 29, 1815, Napoleon, on assuming control 
of France after his return from Elba, decreed the abo- 
lition of the slave-trade. This decree was re-enacted 
in 1818 by the Bourbon dynast3^ 

134 



CO-OPERATION FOR SUPPRESSING THE TRADE 135 

By the treaty of Ghent, concluded December 24, 
1814, Great Britain and the United States agreed to 
"use their best endeavors" for the abolition of the 
trade. 

On February 8, 1815, " five of the principal Powers 
[Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France] 
made a solemn engagement, in the face of mankind, 
that this traffic should be made to cease, in pursuance 
of which these Powers have enacted municipal laws to 
suppress the trade." 

On July 23, 1817, Great Britain and Portugal made 
a treaty whereby "ships of war of each nation might 
visit merchant vessels of both, if suspected of having 
slaves on board, acquired by illicit traffic." This related 
only to trade north of the equator. On September 23d 
of the same 'year Spain agreed, in consideration of 
£400,000 paid to her as an inducement, to " the imme- 
diate abolition of the trade north of the equator, its 
entire abolition after [May 30] 1820, and the conces- 
sion of the same mutual right of search which the 
treaty with Portugal had just established." Portugal 
agreed to abolish the trade absolutely in 1823. 

Mixed courts were also established under these 
treaties, but it is certain that their work was nullified 
as far as possible by both the Spanish and the Portu- 
guese people. 

Few events more honorable to the British nation 
are described in history. Her willingness to pay out 
$2,000,000 thus early for the benefit of a down-trod- 
den race was not only a forerunner of a similar and 
much greater sacrifice, but it was characteristic. That 
Spain should have been willing to accept pay under 
such circumstances, and that she should then have de- 



136 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

liberately violated the contract for more tlian fifty 
years, was also characteristic. 

On May 4, 1818, Great Britain and the Netherlands 
contracted for a mutual right of search. 

On March 3, 1824, Great Britain enacted that any 
British subject found guilty of engaging in the slave- 
trade should " be deemed and adjudged guilty of 
Pirac}^, Felony and Robbery," and should "suffer 
Death without Benefit of Clergy, and Loss of Lands, 
Goods and Chattels, as Pirates, Felons and Robbers 
upon the Seas ought to suffer." 

In 1713 the Assiento treaty was considered a mar- 
vellous triumph of diplomacy. In 1824, the trade con- 
templated in that treaty was denominated piracy. 

On November 6, 1824, Sweden and Great Britain 
agreed to a mutual right of search on the slave-coast, 
and England invited us to join in such an agreement, 
though we declined. In 1820 she had done this also. 
In 1830 Brazil prohibited the slave-trade under severe 
penalties. In 1831 and 1833 Great Britain and France 
agreed to a mutual right of search, and then together 
invited the United States to join them under the 
same agreement. 

This is an important matter from one point of view. 
We fought out the war of 1812 because of British ag- 
gression ; but, in spite of our victories, the British, 
when peace was made, refused to concede our de- 
mands in regard to the searching of our ships and tlie 
impressment of our seamen. But now, in order to 
suppress the slave-trade, England not only asked for 
the right of search within a definitely described space, 
but in terms both renounced all claims to a right of 
search elsewhere and offered to agree that no seamen 



CO-OPERATION FOR SUPPRESSING THE TRADE 137 

Bliould be impressed from the ships so to be searched. 
A pirate had been, by the law of nations, a man with- 
out a country : he was the lawful prize of all honest 
ships. The plain meaning of any statute declaring the 
slave-trade piracy was to deliver up the slaver to the 
vengeance of any lawfully authorized patrolman of the 
high seas. Great Britain was entirely willing that 
every British slaver should be treated so, but even 
John Quincy Adams was constrained to declare to the 
British authorities, at the behest of the slaver power, 
that the slave-trade was " statutory piracy " — some- 
thing different from high-sea robbery. It could never 
be allowed by the people of the United States that an 
American slaver should be treated as a liigh-sea robber 
by any other power than an American court ! 

Anyone wishing to examine the original documents 
pertaining to this branch of the subject will find them 
in Sen. Doc, 18 Cong. 2 Sess. I. No. 1 ; and American 
State Papers, Foreign, V. Probably the most inter- 
esting of our public documents on the slave-trade are 
No. 283, Ho. Rep., 27 Cong. 3d Sess., and Doc. No. 
115, Ho. Ex. Rep. 26 Cong., 2d Sess. 

The radical trouble was that cotton-growing was be- 
coming so profitable that people who in 1808 thought 
slaverj'- a dying institution had become aggressive for 
the spread of it, and so men were always found in Con- 
gress to block legislation that would hinder the slavers. 
Worse yet, the law of May 15, 1820, was thwarted by 
the United States District Attorneys who brought 
indictments against captured slavers under previous 
Statutes. It appears by the records, for instance, that 
in the United States District Court for Maryland, Cap- 
tain Jason L. Pendleton, of the slaver brig Montemdeo^ 



138 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

was sentenced on Monday, June 23, 1845, by Justice 
Heath, on an indictment found under the statute of 
May 10, 1800. 

Our act of 1819 for the suppression of the skive-trade 
had carried an appropriation of $100,000 for enforcing 
it. In 1823 we appropriated $50,000. Thereafter at 
wide intervals smaller appropriations were made. In 
1834 only $5,000 was appropriated, and not another 
cent was given after that until 1842. Moreover the 
money given in these appropriations was not wholly 
for the direct suppression of the slave-trade, the bulk 
being devoted to the support of negroes captured 
from smugglers and of that ill-gotten enterprise the 
Liberia colony. 

Nevertheless a treaty in relation to the slave-trade 
was yet to be made with Great Britain. The causes 
leading to this treaty were numerous, the chief cause 
being the exposures, frequently made, of the doings of 
American slave-ships. Our cruisers captured a slaver 
now and then. The Cyane, the first sent out, captured 
five, of which the Plattshurgh was most notorious. 
The tales of these slavers, and the perjury which 
their owners never hesitated to commit (see the slaver 
cases in reports of U. S. Supreme Court) were shock- 
ing. 

But the feature of the trade that proved most shock- 
ing was the use of the American flag for its protection. 
Because we had deliberately and emphatically de- 
clared that no foreign ship should search an American 
merchant-man in time of peace, the slavers flocked to 
our flag. Slavers were captured, too, that carried 
blank American papers to be filled out as occasion re- 
quired. The Constliiccao, with blank papers signed 



CO-OPERATION FOR SUPPRESSING THE TRADE 139 

by United States Consul K P. Trist, of Havana, was 
one. (See Sen. Ex. Doc. 125, 26 Cong. 2 Sess.) 

Then came Buxton's book on "The Slave-trade and 
Its Remedy." It was an appeal to sentiment rather 
than reason, but it gave facts which have never been 
seriously disputed, and which excited horror wherever 
read. It was proved beyond dispute that more than 
250,000 lives were deliberately sacrificed in Africa and 
more than 60,000 on the high seas in each year in order 
to supply the Americans with the slaves wanted. 

Meantime there were a number of matters in contro- 
versy between Great Britain and the United States, 
and the people were sensible enough to get commis- 
sioners to consider them instead of going to war. Out 
of this commission came a treaty of which the part im- 
portant for this history was a solemn agreement on the 
part of the United States to keep a squadron of war- 
ships cruising on the African coast to operate in con- 
junction with a British squadron of equal force for the 
suppression of the slave-trade. 

Our laws had, therefore, permitted the President to 
send naval vessels to Africa to suppress the slave- 
trade. By Article 8 of what is known as the Ashbur- 
ton Treaty we became in honor bound to "maintain 
in service, on the coast of Africa, a suflBcient and ade- 
quate squadron or naval force of vessels, of suitable 
numbers and descriptions, to carry in all not less than 
eighty guns, to enforce, separately and respectively, 
the laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two 
countries for the suppression of the slave-trade." 

Daniel Webster signed the treaty for the United 
States, and Lord Ashburton for Great Britain, on 
August 9, 1842. 



CHAPTER XIV 

TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 

How the Laws were Interpreted— Slavers that would Make a 
Fierce Fight — Famous American Privateers that Became 
Slavers — Whole Cargoes of Slaves Thrown to the Sharks 
to Avoid the Confiscation of Vessels — Tales of the Rapido, 
the Regulo, and Hemans's Brillante — A Cargo of Slaves 
Bound to Anchor and Chain and Thrown Overboard — A 
Slaver Who Coolly Murdered His Sweetheart and Child — 
A Trade that was Lucrative in Proportion to Its Heinous- 
ness. 

The trade being now outlawed, the tender solicitude 
of legislators for what were called lawful traders, 
that is, traders who exchanged rum and cast-iron 
muskets for ivory and palm-oil, was so great that 
the law regarding slavers was restricted in ridicu- 
lous fashion. Nor w^as it ridiculous alone from the 
point of view of one who sees that to trade rotten 
muskets for good palm-oil and ivory was degrading to 
the trader. The lawful traders, so called, on the coast 
of Africa were almost invariably panders to the slave- 
traders. Says Drake, in his "Revelations of a Slave- 
Smuggler " (p. 66), regarding the goods he exchanged 
for slaves: "Our spirits, cotton, powder, and guns 
are bought from English trading stations on the Congo. 
We buy on the coast, and pay higher for these goods, 
rather than that the old factories should break up ; 

140 



TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 141 

they being very convenient sometimes as temporary 
slave depots." 

To protect tliese panders it was provided in the con- 
ventions between England and various continental 
governments for tlie suppression of the trade that 
" no visit or detention can take place, except by a 
commissioned officer having express instructions and 
authority for the same ; nor can he detain or carry into 
port any vessel so visited, except on the single and 
simple fact of slaves found on board." 

In like fashion it was held for a time in our courts 
that the presence of slaves on a ship was necessary to 
secure her conviction as a slaver. Eventually the 
presence of slave-goods was sufficient to convict, and 
in English courts the slave-goods were also considered 
good evidence as to an English slaver, but it appears 
that when a slaver under any other flag was to be 
tried there it was always necessary to show that the 
slaves were on board lest some harm be done to the 
"lawful trader." 

As to the effect of the laws on the slavers— the men 
in the trade— there is one feature of this effect that 
seems to have been overlooked by the writers who 
have considered the subject. It is a most interest- 
ing fact that from the moment it was outlawed the 
slave-trade became more attractive to certain advent- 
urous spirits of the age. For it need not be doubted 
that men lived in those days whose souls as eagerly 
sought the thrill of a fight for life — whose souls 
more eagerly sought for the smell of burned gun- 
powder and the sight of blood-splashed decks than 
for the gold doubloons that rewarded the successful 
voyage. The sea was alive with men who had served in 



142 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

the privateers during tlie long-continued wars, and 
real black-flag pirates abounded. To declare by legis- 
lative enactment that the slave-trade was illegitimate 
was for these men but to increase its attractiveness. 

Still all slavers were greedy, more or less, and an 
immediate effect of the laws was to reduce the price 
of the slaves on the coast of Africa. Slavers, w^hen 
the trade was law^ful, had often paid as high as $100 
for a good negro in Africa. The price now went down 
to $15 and $20. On the other hand, the market in the 
West was at least made firm. Prices were not raised 
in Cuba or Brazil, perhaps, but there was never any 
trouble in disposing of the cargo even when the slaves 
were reduced so much that they had to be carried ashore 
in arms, like babes, from the landing barges. The 
price in the United States would have been increased 
by the laws, only for the fact that Virginia had become 
an exporter of slaves ; but, as it was, the price was 
already high enough to yield a profit that now seems 
well-nigh incredible. The slave that cost $20 in Africa 
would, if landed in fairly good order in Georgia bring 
no less than $500 net, even after allowing for dividing 
with underground agents there. In short, outlawing 
the trade enhanced its attractiveness in every way to 
the wilder spirits. 

So it came to pass that a naval cruiser's success in 
capturing a slaver sometimes depended on the relative 
size, speed, and armament of the two ships. In the 
House Reports No. 348, 21st Congress, first session, is 
a list of eighteen slavers that resisted the cruisers by 
force of arms. Of these, five were former well-known 
American privateers. They were the Commodore 
Perry ^ the Commodore McDonough^ the Argus, the 



TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 143 

Criterion^ and the Saucy JacJc. Built for speed, and 
manned by men who had seen service in voyages for 
legal plunder, these privateers were the ideal slavers. 
They went down the slave-coast flying any flag that 
pleased the fanc}". If they fell in with a slaver of Jess 
force than their own they transferred her cargo to their 
own decks. If they met a small cruiser they cleared 
for action, and it is a matter of record that they made 
such a good fight, in many cases, that they beat off 
armed agents of the law. Of the five, four were capt- 
ured, but, each of the brief reports says, "after a 
severe action." The Saucy Jack seems to have justi- 
fied her name, for she not only escaped capture but 
" convoyed several vessels to and from th^ coast." 

The Paz was a noted Yankee slaver. " Under the 
American flag" she "beat off the Princess Charlotte 
and killed several of her men." The Camperdown^ an 
English slaver brig, of sixteen guns, "destroyed the 
sloops Ramhler and Trials of Sierra Leone, and carried 
off their black crews as slaves," and " made slaves of 
all the people going off in canoes." 

And then there was the slaver Velos Passagero. 
She carried twenty guns and a crew of one hundred 
and fifty men. Having five hundred and fifty-five 
slaves on board, she fell in with the British sloop-of- 
war Primrose, but not until forty-six of her crew had 
been killed and twenty wounded by the war-ship's 
close-range fire, would she jdeld. The sIoojd lost three 
killed and twelve wounded. 

Extended reports of these battles are not now to be 
found, but the brief statements of losses show how 
stubbornly the outlaws resisted arrest when they were 
of a force to give hope of success. 



144 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

On the whole, it is likely that during the earlier 
years of this century nearly a fourth of all the slavers 
overhauled by the cruisers made some sort of resist- 
ance with arms, and as late as 1845 we have an account 
of the massacre of the crew of the cruiser Wasp on 
the African coast. But that one was a sorry victory 
for the slavers, for it led to the just order to British 
cruisers to give no quarter to a slaver that resisted, 
and resistance immediately went out of fashion. 

Previous to that massacre, according to Captain 
Canot, British officers were known, sometimes, to ad- 
mire a good fighter so much as to let him escape — 
even to help him escape after capture ! 

When there was no hope in a fight, the only way 
to escape condemnation was to get rid of the slaves 
before the cruiser could get an officer alongside. That 
legislators should not have foreseen the effect of this 
law or its interpretation, is no great wonder. But 
that the rule should have remained in force as it did 
is a shocking exhibit in the civilization of the day. 

The facts as to the workings of this rule appear in 
the brief stories of scores of captured slavers. There 
was the case reported by the British cruiser Black 
JoTce, Captain Ramsey, for instance, in the Bight of 
Benin, in 1831. Captain Ramsey sent two tenders in 
chase of the Spanish slaver brigs Rapulo and Regulo 
that were seen coming, loaded with slaves, from the 
Bonny River in September of that 5^ear. 

"When chased by the tenders both put back, made 
all sail up the river, and ran on shore. During 
the chase they were seen from our vessels to throw 
their slaves overboard, by twos, sliackled together by 
the ankles, and left in this manner to sink or swim as 




SHE WALKED TO THE SHIP'S SIDE AND DROPPED THE BODY INTO THE SEA. 

See page 78. 



TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 145 

they best could. Men, women, and children were 
seen in great numbers, struggling in the water, by 
everyone on board the two tenders ; and, dreadful to 
relate, upward of one hundred and fifty of these 
wretched creatures perished in this way." So runs 
Captain Ramsey's report. Captain Ramsey said after- 
ward that he and his men distinctly saw the sharks 
tearing the negroes as they struggled in the water. 

In order to save the two vessels, that together were 
not worth $10,000, from condemnation in court, these 
slaver captains deliberately murdered one hundred and 
fifty human beings. 

The Regulo was overhauled while she had yet two 
hundred and four on board out of her original cargo 
of four hundred and fifty. The Rapido had not one 
left on board when overhauled, but, two of her cargo 
having been picked up, it was possible to prove that 
they had been on board of her, and she was made a 
lawful prize. 

One of the most murderous stories of captains who 
were anxious to get rid of their slaves is told of 
the slaver Brillante^ commanded by an Englishman 
named Homans, who in ten voyages had landed 5,000 
negroes in Cuba. She was brig rigged, carried ten 
guns, thirty sweeps (big oars), and a crew of sixty men 
in the forecastle. An English cruiser that attacked 
her was so badly cut up that her crew had to abandon 
her. When, on another occasion, the boats from a 
sloop-of-war attacked the Brillante they were driven 
off with great slaughter. Finally Homans found him- 
self trapped by four cruisers that came upon him from 
all quarters, and there was no escaping them. 

However, the wind died away and night came on 

10 



146 IHI^ AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

before the cruisers arrived at their range, and at that 
Homans set his largest anchor ready for dropping. 
Then he hauled the chain-cable out through the 
hawse-pipe and stretched it around the ship outside 
the rail, by means of slender stops, and to this chain 
he bound every slave on board— about 600 in number, 
piling them up at the rail and securing their arm- 
shackles to it by strong cords through the chain links. 
There the slaves remained until the war-ship boats were 
heard coming near at hand, and then he cast loose the 
anchor, and down all those slaves were carried into the 
sea. 

Although the crews of the war-ship boats had heard 
the noise and the outcries when the slaves were sent 
to the bottom, and the hold of the slaver contained 
indisj)Utable evidence that the slaves had been there 
but a few minutes before the boats arrived, they had 
to let the slaver go free. Indeed, Homans jeered in 
their faces and defied them as they stood on his deck, 
but they had no redress. 

The British war-ship Medina on boarding a slaver 
off the Gallinas River found no slaves on board. The 
officers learned afterward, however, that her captain 
really had had a mulatto girl in the cabin. He kept 
her for some time after the cruiser appeared, but see- 
ing that he was to be boarded, and knowing that the 
presence of one slave was enough to condemn the 
ship, he tied her to a kedge anchor and dropped her 
into the sea. And so, as is believed, he drowned his 
own unborn flesh and blood, as well as the slave girl. 

In view of the murders invariably committed on 
board the slavers, it is not without interest to recall 
that among those captured in 1828 was one on its way 



TALES OF THE OUTLAWED TRADE 147 

from Africa to Brazil, that was called the Bom \Sic^ 
Jesus. 

One might multiply these stories by going to the 
slaver cases that reached the United States Supreme 
Court, but it would only add to the number of facts 
without increasing knowledge. The student who may 
wish to pursue the subject will find all the stories he 
needs in "Wheaton's Reports," vols. 5, 8, 9, 10, and 
12; "Cranch's," 2, and 6; "Peters' s," 11, 14, and 
15 ; all of which were carefully examined in preparing 
this work. 

As to the extent of the trade previous to the Ash- 
burton treaty, we can find ample confirmation of all 
the estimates ever made by the abolitionists if we will 
examine the official reports of consuls and naval 
officers. Captain Trenchard of the Cyane, for instance, 
reported three hundred slavers on the coast while he 
was there. Over two hundi-ed slavers were nominally 
owned in Havana in 1818. During the year 1828 no less 
than 46,160 slaves were imported into Rio de Janeiro 
alone, and the slavers bringing them reported deaths on 
the way numbering 5,592 (see N lies'' s Register, Janu- 
ary 9, 1830). Cuba and Brazil had become the great 
landing territories for slaves, for it was an open traf- 
fic there in spite of solemn treaties. The trade was 
indeed "lucrative in proportion to its heinousness" ; 
the traders " to elude the laws " did but " increase its 
horrors." 



CHAPTER XV 

THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 

Story of the Half-hearted, Wholly Futile Work of Block- 
ading the African Coast — Reward of an Officer Who 
Earnestly Strove to Stop the Trade — An Interesting 
Period in the Career of Commodore M. C. Perry — 
American and British Squadrons Compared — The Sham 
Work of the Buchanan Administration. 

The first act of Congress to connect our navy in any 
way with the slave-trade was that of 1800. Section 4 
provided "That it shall be lawful for any of the com- 
missioned vessels of the United States to seize and 
take any vessel employed in carrying on trade, busi- 
ness or traffic, contrary to the true intent and mean- 
ing of this, or the said act, to which this is in addition." 

Nothing to attract public attention was done by the 
navy under this act until 1811, when Captain H. G. 
Campbell, senior officer at Charleston, was ordered by 
Secretary Paul Hamilton to "hasten" to the St. 
Mary's River as already noted, to stop the smuggling 
trade. A similar use of the navy was made in the 
trouble with Aury. 

After the act of March 3, 1819, several ships were 
sent to the coast of Africa. The Cyane, Captain Ed- 

148 



THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 149 

ward Trencliard, twenty-four guns, sailed from the 
United States in January, 1820 ; the corvette Hornet^ 
Captain George C. Reed, eighteen guns, sailed in 
June, 1820, and the corvette John Adams, Captain 
H. S. Wadswortli, twenty-four guns, sailed July 18, 
1820. To these was added the schooner Alligator, 
Captain R. F. Stockton, that sailed on April 3, 1821, 
reached the coast on ^lay 6, started home in July, 
sailed out once more on October 4, and left for home 
on December 17, thus making two cruises on the coast 
in that year. The schooner Shark, Captain M. C. 
Perry (a brother of the hero of Lake Erie), sailed on 
August 7, 1821, and was on the slave-coast a part of 
September, all of October, and a part of November. 
Trenchard of the Cyaiie reported that there were three 
hundred slave-ships on the coast. Perry reported, " I 
could not evien hear of an American slaving vessel ; 
and I am fully impressed with the belief that there is 
not one at present afloat." * 

The Cyane captured five American slavers, the Hor- 
net took one, the Alligator took four, but three of 
these were recaptured from the prize-crews. The 
fourth, the Jeune Eugene, reached Boston and was 
condemned. 

In 1822, Captain R. T. Spence succeeded Trenchard in 
command of the Cyane. The Secretary of the Navy, 
Samuel L. Southard, in his report dated December 1, 
1823, says that both Spence and Perry "have, for 
short periods, cruised on the coast of Africa to carry 
into effect the intentions of the Government. . . . 
[they] neither saw nor heard of any vessel, under the 
American flag, engaged in the slave-trade." 

* " American State Papers— Naval Affairs," Vol. I., p. 1099. 



150 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Thereafter the work of the navy in suppressing the 
slave-trade was confined to "occasional visits" to Li- 
beria until 1839, when the shame aroused by the fre- 
quent reports of the use of the American flag by 
slavers caused some activity. The brig Dolphin, 
Commander Bell, and the schooner Grampus, Lieu- 
tenant Paine, were sent to the coast, where they mere- 
ly scared a few slavers. Captain John S. Paine, of the 
schooner Grampus, having been ordered to the coast 
of Africa to suppress the slave-trade, assumed that 
he was to do everything possible within the laws of 
nations to accomplish the work. He found many 
slavers provided with double sets of papers. Now, 
under the laws he could do nothing with slavers 
bearing any flag but his own. But England hav- 
ing made treaties including the right of search on 
that coast with a number of continental powers, 
her cruisers were able to search almost any ship 
visiting the coast except those under the American 
flag. 

To meet the scheme of double papers Captain Paine 
and Commander William Tucker, of the British forces, 
agreed that whenever the Grampus fell in with a 
vessel manifestly a slaver, and showing any flag ex- 
cept the American, she was to be detained (but not 
searched) until a British cruiser could be brought to 
search her. On the other hand, every slaver showing 
the American flag was to be detained (but not searched) 
until the Grampus could come to make the search. 
When Paine reported his plan to Washington he 
was promptly told that his plan was "contrary to 
the well-known principles" of his Government. The 
slave-coast was 3,000 miles long. Paine was ordered 



THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TKADE 



151 



to "suppress" all American slavers there with the 
Grampus. 

In 1842 came the Ashburton treaty, under which 
we were bound to keep on the coast of Africa a 
'-'- sufficient and adequate'''' squadron or naval force of 
vessels for the '•^suppression'''' of the slave-trade. 
England was bound by the same words.* 

The fact is, we never had oil the coast, for any length 
of time worth mention, even tlie eighty guns which the 



* A message of President Buchanan under date of April 21, 1858, to 
the Senate of the United States contains the following tahles showing 
how each nation kept its faith : 

ThcfoUowing is a statement of the number of vessels and total number of guns of the 
British squadron on the west coast of Africa on the \st of January of each year 
from 1S43 to 1857, inclusive : 



Year. 


Vessels. 


Guns. 


Year. 


Vessels. 


Guns. 


1843 


14 
14 
20 
23 
21 
21 
23 
24 


141 
117 
180 
245 
205 
208 
155 
154 


1851 ' 26 


201 


1844 

1845 

1846 

1847 

1848 

1849 

1850 


1852 

1853 

1854 

1855 

1856 

1857 


25 
19 
18 
12 
13 
16 


174 

117 

108 

71 

72 

84 



The following is a statement of the number of vessels and total number of guns of the 
United States squadron on the coast of Africa on the 1st of January of each year 
from 1843 to 1857, inclusive : 



Year. 


Vessels. 


1843 


2 


1844 


4 


1845 


5 


1846 


6 


1847 


4 


1848 


5 


1849 


o 


1850 


5 - 







Guns. 



30 
82 
98 
82 
80 
66 
72 
76 



Year. 


Vessels. 


1851 


6 


1852 


o 


1853 


7 


1854 


4 


1855 


3 


1856 


3 


1857 


3 



Guns, 



96 

76 

136 

88 
82 
46 
46 



152 '^^^ AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

treaty called for. The table shows how many guns 
were on ships assigned to the squadron, not what 
were actually on the coast. 

Commodore M. C. Perry was the first officer to com- 
mand on the coast under this treaty. He got his or- 
ders on April 6, 1843, and reached Liberia on August 
1st. It was almost a year after the treaty was ratified 
before we had a gun on the coast, and even then she 
was at an American free colony. 

Perry's ship was the Saratoga, a frigate, whereas 
light, swift schooners were needed. However, the Par- 
poise did cruise on the slave-coast. The instructions 
to her commander, as issued by Perry, may be summed 
up in the following paragraph taken from a letter un- 
der date of August 1st : 

It is only necessary for me to add that under no circum- 
stances are you to permit, without resistance to the extent of 
your means, any foreign vessel of war, of whatever /orce or na- 
tion, in the exercise of any assumed right of search or visita- 
tion, to board in your presence (you havingfirst forbidden it) 
any vessel having the American flag displayed. But you are 
to use every vigilance in examining, with your own officers, 
the vessels so displaying the American flag, and if it shall be 
found that she has unauthorizedly hoisted such flag, you will, 
if there be no cause for detention by yourself, immediately 
give notice to any vessel of war in sight that she (the vessel 
examined by you) has no rightful claim to your interference 
or protection. 

The Decatur also cruised on the slave-coast. Her 
orders said : 

It is my desire that you show your shij) at as many of 
the slave and trading marts as time and circumstances will 
authorize. 



THE NAVY AND TEE SLAVE-TRADE I53 

This order calls to mind a certain game constable 
employed by the State of New York to prevent poach- 
ers from killing deer in the Adirondacks out of season. 
Some law-abiding citizens having notified him that 
Utica scoundrels were killing deer by jacklight on Lit- 
tle Black Creek Lake, the constable said : " TU stop 
them at once." Thereat he drove as near to the lake 
as the woods roads would permit, and stuck his card in 
the splinters of a dozen or more stumps along the 
route. 

"There," said he; "that'll scare 'em out." Then 
he drove home again. 

Having fallen in with a British cruiser, Perry got 
authentic stories of tw^o American vessels, the Illinois 
and ShaJcspeare, that brought slave-goods to the 
coast, and, after discharging, were loaded with slaves. 
Then the American flag was hauled down and away 
they went over the sea. The Illinois hailed from 
Gloucester, Mass., and was the property of Pason & 
Co. 

In the instructions issued to British naval officers 
on the coast after the treaty of August 9, 1842, ap- 
pears the following sentence : 

"The commanding officers of Her Majesty's vessels 
on the African station are to bear in mind that it is 
no part of their duty to capture or visit, or in an}^ 
way interfere with, vessels of the United States, wheth- 
er these vessels shall have slaves on board or not." 

The British officers had only to satisfy themselves 
that a ship really had American papers. They were 
even instructed to manoeuvre so as to board witliout 
bringing to the vessels flying the American flag. 

Meantime it should be noted that Perry had been 



154 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

instructed that it was "highly desirable that a vessel 
of each nation should, as far as possible, cruise in 
company with a vessel of the other, so that each may 
be in a position to assert the rights and prevent the 
abuse of the flag of its own countrj^" 

"To assert the rights" was put first, of course; 
joint cruising was desirable rather to keep the British 
from American traders than to suppress the slave- 
trade. 

^^ Joint cruising" was one of the stock terms in use 
at Washington before the civil war. Every admin- 
istration believed in "joint cruising" as the right 
way to suppress the slave-trade. 

Says the chaplain to the African squadron in the 
years 1855-57, himself a believer in slavery, in his 
book "Adventures and Observations on the West 
Coast of Africa" (p. 318): "The joint cruising has 
been from the first in spirit and letter dead. It is 
hardly worth while to inquire upon which party the 
greater blame rests in the non-fulfilment of this pro- 
vision ; but it is certainly true that the object of the 
treaty could be better carried out by a hearty and 
well-understood co-operation. The prevailing indif- 
ference on this subject may be seen by the following 
statement : The flagships of the American and British 
squadrons on the coast in the years 1855, 1856 and 
part of 1857 met but once, and that at sea. They 
were two miles apart ; they recognized each other by 
signal, and by the same means held the following 
communication : 

" ' Anything to communicate ? ' 

"Answer. — ' Nothing to communicate.' " 

Perry himself summed up the result of his work as 



THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TEADE 155 

the commander of the American squadron for the 
suppression of the slave-trade on the coast of Africa 
in a letter to Secretary A. P. Upshur, dated Septem- 
ber 5, 1843 : 

" I cannot hear of any American vessels being en- 
gaged in the transportation of slaves ; nor do I helieve 
there has been one so engaged for several years.'' 

He deliberately ignored the cases of the Illinois and 
the SJiaTcspeare. Moreover that was in 1843, when a 
condition of affairs prevailed at Rio Janeiro that led 
the United States Consul, a Wise of Virginia, to write, 
a little later : " We are a byword among nations— the 
only people who can fetch and carry any and every 
thing for the slave-trade without fear of the English 
cruisers" —a condition wherein the slavers were 
allowed " to pervert onr glorious flag into the pirate's 
flagr 

We can now see how it happened that Perry was 
honored with the command of the Gulf squadron in 
the war with Mexico, and with the command of the 
Japan expedition in later years. The name of Oliver 
Hazard Perry will be held in honor while glorious 
deeds afloat are remembered ; the name of his brother 
Matthew C. Perry brings the flush of shame to the 
face of everyone who is proud of the navy's glory_ 
The system of patrol was utterly wretched and Perry 
was a fit man for commodore under such a system. 

After Commodore Perry the next naval officer in in- 
terest to this history was Admiral Andrew Hull Foote, 
in those days a lieutenant-commander, who was sent to 
the coast as captain of the brig Ferry. 

Foote was a sincere man, but, being of a sanguine 
temperament, he was mistaken as to what was really 



156 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

accomplished by tlie American squadron. He carried 
out tlie spirit of Ms orders, and so devoted very much 
more time to hunting for British cruisers that were 
accused of boarding American ships than to suppress- 
ing the slave-trade. In a book that he wrote about 
his experience on the coast, he devotes more space to 
telling how "the American commodore argued from 
documents and other testimony that bona fide Amer- 
ican vessels had been interfered with, and, whether en- 
gaged in legal or illegal trade, they were in no sense 
amenable to British cruisers" than to the capture of 
slavers. 

Nevertheless Foote did good work on the coast, and 
his book has some good stories of slaver days in it. 
Among the best of the stories is that of the capture of 
the American bark Pons, Captain James Berry, on 
November 30, 1845. The Pons had been at Kabenda 
for twenty days during which the British cruiser Cyg- 
net remained on blockade. But a time came when the 
Cygnet had to leave for supplies. At that Captain 
Berry turned the ship over to one Gallano, a Portu- 
guese slaver, and at eight o'clock that night the Pons 
was under way with nine hundred and three slaves 
under her hatches. 

To avoid the cruisers off shore the Pons kept along- 
shore during the night. At daylight, seeing the upper 
sails of a Britisli cruiser out at sea, she furled her own 
sails and drifted so close in to the breakers that the 
natives came to the beach expecting her to come 
ashore. However, she neither grounded nor attracted 
the British cruiser, and eventually she stood out to sea. 

As it happened, the YorJcioion, Captain Bell, was 
lying in lier path, but the slavers supposed she 




THEN HE CAST LOOSE THE ANCHOR. 

See page 146. 



THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 157 

was a British cruiser and at once set the American 
flag. That settled her fate, for she was a legitimate 
prize to an American warship. The Portuguese cap- 
tain put on his hatches, but no sooner had the American 
naval officer boarded her than they were taken off and 
the "slaves gave a shout that could have been heard a 
mile." 

A remarkable fact about this ship was that she had 
no slave-deck. About eight hundred and fifty of her 
cargo had been stowed in bulk on the water-casks and 
provision barrels in the hold. Eighteen had died 
during the night. In the fourteen days that elapsed 
while going to Monrovia one hundred and fifty more 
died, and eight died while in the harbor before they 
could be landed. 

Foote's chief prize was a big ship called the Martha. 
The Perry arrived at Ambriz on June 5, 1850, in 
search of her flagship, John Adams, but learned that 
she had gone to Loanda. Sailing thence the Perry, 
while at sea, next day, saw a big ship standing in for 
the coast and at four o'clock in the afternoon brought 
her to. At this time the Perry had not shown her 
flag and the stranger hoisted the American flag. Her 
name and port, ^'Martha, N'ew York," were painted 
across her stern. 

Accordingl}^ a boat was sent to her, when her cap- 
tain saw, by the uniform of the boat's oflicer, that the 
Perry was an American cruiser. At that the Mar Ilia's 
American flag was hauled down and the Brazilian 
hoisted, while a writing-desk was thrown overboard on 
the side of the Martha opposite the boat. 

A Portuguese who claimed that he was captain pro- 
tested when Lieutenant Rush, the American boarding 



158 



THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 



officer, reached the deck, but Rush said that the ship 
had made herself a legal prize as a pirate by throwing 
away her papers. The writing-desk had been picked 
up and its contents discovered meantime. The Amer- 
ican captain, though disguised as a common sailor, 
was identified. He finally admitted that she was a 
slaver and that she was to have taken on board 1,800 
slaves that night. 

The Martha and all her crew were sent to New 
York, where the ship was condemned. Her captain 
was released on $3,000 bail, which he at once forfeited. 
The mate was not well taken care of by the slavers, 
for he was sent to prison for two years. 

The farce which our courts played regularly in 
those days was exhibited in this case, for the percent- 
age payable to the slaver captain on an ordinary cargo 
of slaves landed— say four hundred— was $12,000. 
Rarely, if ever, was a greater bail than $5,000 exacted. 

And it is to be further noted that when Foote capt- 
ured the Martha he had "her crew put in irons," 
but " both American and Brazilian captains, together 
with three or four cabin passengers [probably slave- 
agents] were given to understand that they would be 
similarly served in case of the slightest evidence of 
insubordination ! " They lived in the cabin. 

Foote declares that the yellow fever, that has car- 
ried off its tens of thousands of white men, was gen- 
erated from dead slaves in the slavers at Rio de Ja- 
neiro in 1849. He is right beyond question. It is a 
fact that may even now give us pause. The sufferings 
of the slaves were avenged on the white race with mer- 
ciless severity. There is a universal law of compensa- 
tion. 



THE NAVY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 159 

Foote believed that the activity of the American 
squadron in the early fifties had broken up the slave- 
trade. How far wrong he was appears in the report 
of the Secretary of the Navy for 18G0, wherein no less 
than eleven slavers are mentioned as prizes taken in 
18i59. The one most important to this history was the 
ship Erle^ captured on August 8, 1860, off the Congo, 
by the sloop-of-war Mohican, Commander Sylvester 
W. Godon. She had eight hundred and ninety -seven 
slaves on board. She landed those that survived at 
Monrovia. 

The number of slavers captured that year was most 
remarkable. At first glance one would say that the 
Buchanan administration was honestly striving to en- 
force the law, but the fact is, this flurry of activity 
was but a part of a scheme to enlarge the borders of 
American slave territory. Buchanan and his Secre- 
tary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey, deliberately told 
Congress that the administration was " active in its 
endeavors to suppress the African coast slave-trade," 
when they were active only in an effort to annex Cuba 
to the United States. On the same page where Tou- 
cey boasts that his department was "active" (p. 9, 
report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1860), he says : 

"Cuba is now the only mart in the world open to 
this trade. . . . If Ciiba were to pass under the 
Constitution of the United States hy annexation the 
trade would then be effectually suppressed." 



CHAPTER XVI 

FREE-NEGRO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 

England Led the Way by Establishing a Colony at Sierra Leone 
to Provide a Home for Negroes Carried from the United 
States during the Revolutionary War — The Enterprise 
Saved by the Sturdy Maroons — Origin of the American 
Society for Colonizing Free People of Color — Life of the 
Colonists at Cape Mesurado — The Nation of Liberia Or- 
ganized — An Ape of Philanthropy. 

When Lord Mansfield declared on June 22, 1772, 
that the negro Somerset must be set free a new ques- 
tion arose for the consideration of the ruling race. It 
was a question of growing importance, as time went 
on, and it was eventually transferred to America, 
where it became, at last, for a time, the most serious 
subject of discussion before the people of the United 
States: AVhat shall be done with the freed man ? 

It was easy to provide for Somerset and all those 
who were liberated, one at a time, under Lord Mans- 
field's order, but after our Revolationar}'- war the 
English had a larger share in the problem, because 
of the number of American slaves they had carried 
away during that war. 

Most of the slaves thus taken had been landed 
in Nova Scotia, where there were no slaves. The 
negroes would have been more comfortable in the 

IGO 



FEEE-NEGKO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 161 

West India islands, but tliitlier tliey could not be 
taken because the slave-owners were beginning to see 
that free negroes were a serious disturbing element 
among the plantations. It rarely occurred to a negro 
slave that he was born to any rights equal with those of 
his master, until he saw free negroes work or not at 
pleasure, and receive wages when they did work. 
Then he began to think. It was a serious matter 
for the owner when the slave began to think. It 
became most serious in Jamiaca when the slaves fled 
to the mountains for freedom and there organized com- 
munities that were naturally predatory— so serious, 
indeed, that troops were sent into the mountains to 
hunt out with bloodhounds these maroons, as they 
were called. The troops settled the question there 
temporarily by killing many of them and capturing 
more. 

Meantime the British people found the ports of 
England swarming with negroes discharged from the 
navy at the end of the war. So three classes of free 
negroes were to be considered at the end of the 
eighteenth century— the slaves from America, the sail- 
ors from the navy, and the Jamaica maroons. 

As a flrst step in solving the problem an Englishman 
named Smeatham, of London, who had lived for a 
time at the foot of the Sierra Leone Mountains, con- 
ceived the idea of forming an African colony with 
these freedmen. The subject appears to have been 
broached first in 1783; it is mentioned in Sharp's 
"Memoranda" on August 1st of that year, and Sharp 
adopted the idea. Eventually the Government granted 
an allowance of £12 per head for the expense 
of transportation ; a ship was chartered ; a sloop-of- 
11 



IQ2 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

war — the Nautllas, Captain Thompson — was sent as 
convoy, and on April 8, 1787, away they sailed for 
Sierra Leone. There were more than four hundred 
ex-slaves gathered in English ports, and sixty Euro- 
peans in the party. Reaching the coast they pur- 
chased of a native chief, known as King Tom, the Sierra 
Leone colony site, and the African colonization scheme 
was inaugurated. 

How the first colonists died by the score from ma- 
larial fever; how the Nova Scotia negroes were 
brought there to die in like fashion ; how drunkenness 
and indolence helped on the anarchy ; how a war with 
the natives nearly wiped out tlie remnants of the set- 
tlement, and how, at last, in 1800, a band of maroons 
from Jamaica, five hundred and fifty strong, came and 
saved the adventure from utter failure— all that is too 
long a story to be told here. We need only remember 
that the men who saved the colony were those who 
had been too proud to remain slaves, and had found 
liberty in the wilds of the Jamaica mountains until 
hunted down by bloodhounds set on by the Christian 
hosts of the king. 

When the colony of Sierra Leone had been estab- 
lished as a refuge for freed negroes the story was told 
in the United States, where the slave-owners were ever 
in fear of a servile insurrection led by free negroes. 

Here, then, was the solution of the most troublesome 
question known to slave communities ! It appealed to 
the humanitarian who was willing to sacrifice his 
property in slaves whenever he could do so without 
violating the laws of his State, as well as to the slave- 
owner whose brutal tyranny was the result of innate 
cowardice. The one was glad of a chance to give free- 



FKEE-NEGKO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 163 

dom to liis slaves ; the other was glad to get rid of 
the free negroes, whom he hated because he feared 
them. 

Still another class heard of the plan with joy— the 
indolent philanthropists, who would do something for 
unfortunate people if it did not involve too much 
trouble. 

Looking the matter squarely in the face, a century 
after the plan was inaugurated, we can see unmistak- 
ably that the African freedmen colony scheme was 
founded chiefly on indolence and cowardice. If we 
speak of Liberia alone we must say it was founded on 
cowardice and indolence. At the same time many 
upright, sincere, self-sacrificing people were connected 
with both colonies. The tales of what some people 
sulfered to promote the interests of the unfortunate 
blacks are heart-rending. 

It is true that the idea of forming a free-negro colony 
was considered in the American colonies before our 
Revolutionary war, but it was not until Sierra Leone 
was established that anything practical was done here. 
On December 31, 1800, the Virginia House of Delegates 
requested the Governor to correspond with the Presi- 
dent "on the subject of purchasing lands without the 
limits of this State whither persons obnoxious to the 
laws or dangerous to the 'peace of society may be 
removed." (Italics not in original.) Other State Legis- 
latures considered the matter in similar fashion. There 
was talk of sending the free negroes to Hay ti. A part 
of the Louisiana Territory was considered as a possible 
location. Finally, on December 21, 1816, a meeting 
was called in Washington "for the purpose of form- 
ing a colonization society." Henry Clay presided, and 



164 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

on the 28tli tlie organization of the society was com- 
pleted. The constitution adopted began as follows: 

Art. 1. This society shall be called " The American Society 
for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States." 

Art. 2. The object to which its attention is to be exclusively 
directed is to promote and execute a plan for colonizing 
(with their consent) the free people of color, residing in our 
country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem 
most expedient. And the society shall act, to effect this ob- 
ject, in co-operation with the general Government, and such 
of the States as may adopt regulations upon the subject. 

The constitution was written by Kobert Wright, of 
Maryland. Elias B. Caldwell, Clerk of the United 
States Supreme Court, was the chief orator of the oc- 
casion, but John Randolph also spoke. Mr. Justice 
Bushrod Washington was elected President. Henry 
Clay and Andrew Jackson were among the seventeen 
Vice-Presidents, of whom, by the way, only five were 
from the free States. It is asserted that all of the twelve 
managers were slave-owners, and certainly nearly all 
were so, while Bushrod Washington was engaged in 
the domestic slave-trade when not hearing cases on the 
bench. 

J. H. B. Latrobe, in an address delivered before 
the society on January 20, 1880, describes the organi- 
zation and the motives of the original members accu- 
YSitely. lie said that some "regarded it as a mis- 
sionary enterprise on^3^" Others "hoped that it 
would lead to a separation of the negroes from what 
the masters said was aii injurious contact with their 
slavesy Others "believed that it would tend to 
raise the negroes of the United States to civil and re- 
ligious liberty in the land of their forefathers. Others 



FREE ^EGKO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 165 

again supported it as likely to promote emancipation. 
Others looked forward to the commerce that would 
follow the establishment of a colony on the borders 
of a vast continent . . . and others again fancied 
that, in some undefined way, African colonization 
would afford a solution of the negro question in this 
country." 

That is to sa}^, those who " sincerely desired to af- 
ford the free black an asylum from the oppression 
they suffered here, and by tlieir means to extend to 
Africa the blessings of Christianity and civilization" ; 
those who wished to accelerate emancipation ; those 
who expected to enhance tlie value of slaves by get- 
ting rid of the meddlesome free blacks ; those who 
wanted to promote trade in ivory and palm-oil, and 
the half-hearted philanthropists who sought "relief 
from a bad population toithout the trouble and ex- 
pense of impromng it,''' all these were united in an 
organization for colonizing our free negroes in Africa. 
At their meetings "the devoted missionary, ready to 
pour out his life on the sands of Africa," was "jos- 
tled by the trafficker in human flesh," and the " hum- 
ble, self-denying Christian listened to the praises of 
the society from the unblushing profligate." Mr. La- 
trobe, speaking to and for the society, says " /^ loas 
well that all this was so. Co-operation, regardless of 
motive, was the necessity of the occasion." 

Congress by the act of March 3, 1819, authorized 
the President to employ naval ships " to cruise on 
any of the coasts of the United States or territories 
thereof, or of the coasts of Africa or elsewhere," 
to capture slave-ships ; and, further, " to appoint a 
proper person or persons, residing upon the coast of 



/ 



166 THE AxMEKICAN SLAVE-TKADE 

Africa, as agent or agents for receiving the negroes, 
mulattoes, or persons of color, delivered from on 
board vessels seized in the prosecution of the slave- 
trade by commanders of the United States' armed 
vessels." 

The Rev. Samuel Bacon, on the society's recom- 
mendation, was appointed both Government and co- 
lonial agent. Mr. John P. Bankson and Dr. Samuel 
A. Crozer, agents of the society, were associated with 
him. The ship Elizabeth was chartered by the United 
States (Congress had appropriated $100,000) and 
eighty-six colored emigrants were picked up and car- 
ried to Boston. These agreed, "in consideration of 
their passage and other aid," to " prepare suitable ac- 
commodations for such Africans as might be rescued 
from the slave -ships by American cruisers." 

On February 6, 1820, the Elizabeth sailed. A land- 
ing was made at Sherboro, where a New Bedford negro 
named Kizel had established a colony of eight families 
at his own expense. Then " fever made its appear- 
ance among the people, who were loud in their com- 
plaints," * and with very good reason, too, because 
twenty- five of them died of it, and Bacon himself fell 
a victim. The remaining emigrants went to Sierra 
Leone, and colonization was in a bad way. 

But meantime the warship Cyane and others had 
sent several slavers loaded with wild negroes to the 
United States for adjudication, and to get rid of those 
negroes further efforts were made to establish an Afri- 
can colony. The Government sent the war schooner 
Alligator, Captain R. F. Stockton, to explore the 
African coast, and Captain Stockton selected Cape 

* Foote's Africa and the American Flag, p. 113, line 18. 



FREE-NEGEO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 167 

Mesurado as a suitable location, on December 12, 
1822. 

When an attempt to get the land by treaties with 
the natives was made the chiefs foresaw that the colony 
would interfere with their profitable slave-trade, but 
Stockton's diplomacy prevailed, and a tract, including 
Cape Mesurado, that lay between the Mesurado and 
Junk rivers, " thirty-six miles along the sea-shore with 
a breadth of two miles" was secured. 

To this site Dr. Ayres carried the remaining colo- 
nists who had gone to Sierra Leone, landing them on a 
small island "amidst the menaces of the natives." 
Then, by an arrangement with a neighboring chief, 
they crossed the river to the north and "erected a 
number of comparatively comfortable buildings." 

Meantime many colonists had been attacked with 
the unavoidable fever, and while this was spreading 
they had a fight with the natives. An English crew on 
a captured slaver let her drive ashore. The natives 
came to loot her and the colonists helped the English, 
with loss of life on both sides. They saved the vessel 
but incurred the hatred of the natives. The truth is 
the scheme would have failed then and there but for 
the courage and fortitude of Elijah Johnson, one of 
the colored men. 

When Dr. Ayres, the white agent, and a number of 
the emigrants returned to Sierra Leone, "almost in de- 
spair" (as the society's records say, but wholly in de- 
spair, probably), Johnson said : 

" I have been two years searching for a home and I 
have found it, and 1 shall stay." And he did stay. 
Neither the Pilgrim fathers nor the followers of Lord 
Baltimore nor the French Huguenots had worse troub- 



1(38 THE AMEEICA^' SLAVE-TEADE 

les to face than lie, nor did any one of them all show 
a manlier front. 

Not to follow all the distressful details of the found- 
ing of the colony, it may be said that the inevitable 
fever was their chief enemy, even though at one tiir.f 
they had to fight so many natives that the balls from 
their nine-pounder cannon literallj'' passed through 
so many bodies as to spend their entire force in that 
fashion. 

Until 1824, the colonists were, on the whole, acting 
in self-defence. In 1824, no less than fifteen slavers 
were loading, under the guns, almost, of the colony, 
and there was a contract between one slave-trader and a 
native chief by which eight hundred slaves were to be 
delivered within four months. Thereat the colonists as- 
sumed the offensive, attacked the chief who had made 
this contract, destroyed the slave-pen, released the 
slaves, and compelled the chief to sign an agreement 
to abandon the trade. 

Following this a slaver settlement called Tradetown, 
where there were three slave factories and two armed 
slave-ships, was attacked. The fighting lasted from 
April 10th to April 12th, inclusive (1824), the settle- 
ment was captured, and "the explosion of two hun- 
dred kegs of powder consummated the destruction of 
Tradetown." 

"The annihilation of Tj-adetown and of the slave 
factories was a severe blow to the traffic, which was 
felt as far south as the Bight of Benin," says Commo- 
dore Foote. 

This much was done by free colored men. In view 
of that fact the reader will find the following extracts 
from publications of the Colonization Society remark- 



FriEE-.XEGEO COLONIES AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 1G9 

able reading. Said Henry Clay in a speech found in 
the African Repository^ Vol. VI., p. 12 : 

" Of all the descriptions of our population the free 
persons of color are by fur, as a class, the most cor- 
rupt, depraved, and abandoned." The same periodi- 
cal. Vol. VII., p. 230, called them "an anomalous 
race of beings, the most depraved upon earth." An 
editorial Vol. I., p. 68, said : " There is a class among 
us, introduced by violence, notoriously ignorant, de- 
graded and miserable, mentally diseased^ broken- 
spirited.^'' 

Meantime the colony had been named Liberia by 
the home society, from the Latin word liber, a free 
man. 

In 1834 the Maryland Colonization Society, formed 
on the same lines as the original association, sent out 
an expedition on the brig Ann. She called at Mon- 
rovia, got twenty-five acclimated citizens, and, going 
down to Cape Palmas, formed an independent colony, 
landing on February 11th. "A very valuable tract of 
land at Bassa Cove was purchased for the Young 
Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania," this 
year, and the ship Ninus landed one hundred and 
twenty-six emigrants there, of which one hundred and 
ten were "slaves, freed by the will of Dr. Hawes, of 
Virginia." Meantime the original colony was widen- 
ing its borders. 

Then came (in 1836) Thomas Buchanan, a colored 
man, agent of the New York and Pennsylvania so- 
cieties to Monrovia. He was a born leader. He saw 
the evil likely to arise through trade jealousies be- 
tween the separate and independent though neigh- 
boring colonies, and a union of all was effected under 



170 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

a constitution providing for a government somewhat 
like that of the United States. No white man could 
become a land-owner under the law^s, but all adult 
black males w^ere voters, and slavery was absolutely 
prohibited. It failed of making a nation of the col- 
onies only because "the American Colonization So- 
ciety retained the right to veto the acts of the local 
legislature.'' 

This was an anomalous condition of affairs, but it 
served very well until Buchanan, as governor of the 
united colonies, began levying duties on goods im- 
ported at old-established trading posts lying within 
the territory over which his people had obtained con- 
trol. There were factories for legitimate trade that 
had been in existence longer than the Liberian settle- 
ments. The traders having made the establishments 
by the same sort of contract that existed between 
the natives and the Liberians, believed themselves to 
have as good rights to free trade there as the Libe- 
rians had. Buchanan acted on the theory that the 
Liberian Government had the same control over its 
territory as our Government has over the United 
States. 

As a matter of fact Liberia had then no standing as 
a government. It consisted merely of a lot of settle- 
ments controlled by a society of private American 
citizens. So wiien Buchanan seized by force the 
property of certain British citizens he went too far. 
The British Government naturally protected its cit- 
izens, and the Joliii Seyes, a colonial schooner, was 
taken by way of reprisal. 

This led to an appeal to the American Government. 
It was proposed that the United States adopt the col- 



FliEE-NEGEO COLO^'IES AXD THE SLAVE-TRADE 171 

ony as Great Britain had adopted Sierra Leone ; bnt 
we would have no entangling over-sea alliances, and so 
missed a chance to get a foothold on what is now a 
continent well worth exploiting. So a compromise 
was effected with the British. 

After a time Buchanan died in the harness and Jo- 
seph J. Roberts succeeded him as Governor. He was 
a statesman as well as a natural leader. He had been 
trained under the masterful Buchanan, and the region 
under his control continued to flourish, after a fash- 
ion, until the evil of its anomalous position among na- 
tions compelled an organization as a republic. Ac- 
cordingly a convention was called, a Declaration of 
Independence was proclaimed, a new constitution writ- 
ten and adopted, and on August 24, 1847, the lone-star 
flag of the Republic of Liberia was flung to the 
breeze. 

A census report published in the African Reposi- 
tory for 1847 (p. 192) shows that in 1845 the immi- 
grant population amounted "to nearly 5,000," to 
which was added a native population of which " esti- 
mates vary from 10,000 to 15,000. Of these about 300 
are so far civilized" that they were permitted to vote 
at elections. In this report the startling statement is 
made that of all the emigrants from the United States 
to Liberia no less than one-fifth had died of the so- 
called acclimatizing fevers! The average life of a 
white man there, as learned on another authority, was 
three years. 

Ten years later (1857) the Rev. Charles W. Thomas, 
the naval chaplain already quoted, reported Liberia as 
having a coast line of " over 600 miles, embracing a 
country of 30,000 square miles, and a population of 



172 '^ili^ AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

over 10,000 civilized blacks and 200,000 natives" (un- 
civilized). This may be considered a friendly esti- 
mate. 

In 1857 the Government income was $47,556 ; dis- 
bursements, $47,048. Said Thomas : "There is a sur- 
plus in the treasury of $500 ; but truth demands the 
statement that many of the Government officials, 
noble and patriotic men, have deferred drawing the 
full amount of their salaries, small as these are, until 
the country is more able to pay them." 

Of the history of Liberia since that time little need 
be said. Perhaps as a last item the fact that it stood, 
liat in hand, before Congress in 1879, begging for the 
pitiful sura of $25,000, will suffice. 

The old society has still life enough to support a 
secretary and publish an annual report, but its power 
for creating discontent among the American negroes is 
well-nigh ended. It was an ape of philanthropy from 
the day of its organization, and the industrial schools 
for colored men that are flourishing at the end of the 
nineteenth century will soon strangle — or starve — it 
to death, when its memory will be found worth pre- 
serving only as a warning. 




THEY WERE SEEN TO THROW SLAVES OVERBOARD SHACKLED TOGETHER. 

See page 144. 



CHAPTER XVII 

TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 

Colored Men from New York Prison Sent to New Orleans and 
Sold— Stealing Slaves in New Jersey for the Southwest 
Market— Coastwise Slavers that Lost their Human Car- 
goes in British Islands— Madison Washington a Negro 
Worthy of his Name— Joshua R. Giddings and the Coast- 
wise Trade— Extent of the Coastwise Traffic. 

When the United States prohibited the slave-trade 
by the act of March 2, 1807, a reservation was care- 
fully made in favor of the coastwise trade of the na- 
tion itself. Sections 8 and 9 provided that no "ship 
or vessel of less burthen than forty tons," in the coast 
trade, should take on board or transport any slave " to 
any port or place whatsoever" under penalty of $800 
for each slave. Any " ship or vessel of the burthen of 
forty tons or more . . . sailing coastwise from 
any port in the United States to any port or place 
within the jurisdiction of the same," might carry 
slaves, however, on making out "duplicate manifests 
of every such negro," with a full description of each, 
and delivering " such manifests to the collector of the 
port," before sailing. There was absolutely no limit 
specified as to the number to be carried, nor was there 
any provision for the safety, let alone the health and 
comfort, of the slaves so to be carried. And that, too, 

173 



174 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

in the face of the fact tliat a voyage from the breeding 
plantations in Virginia to the market in New Orleans 
might, and often did, last as many days as the shorter 
voyages from Africa to the West Indies. 

Curious tales are told regarding the working of this 
law. The first, so far as found by the writer hereof, is 
in an incidental reference in a public document quoted 
in Niles'^s Beglster for September 30, 1815, wherein 
is mentioned the fact that "a j^oung woman named 
Catharine Richardson" was "in the schooner Cyn- 
tliia, of New York, Charles Johnson, master." John- 
son having touched at a British port, his slave 
managed to get ashore and found friends who se- 
cured her freedom under the British law that pro- 
hibited the importation of slaves. That occurred in 
1811. 

A New Orleans paper quoted in the Register for 
February 8, 1817, said : 

"Some inhuman speculator at New York has dis- 
burthened the prison of that city of seventy or eighty 
negroes, by procuring their imprisonment to be com- 
muted for transportation, and shipping them for this 
place — where they arrived a few days ago. But he 
has been disappointed of his profit, and we doubt if he 
will clear even the freight of his cargo. The corpora- 
tion has very properly ordered the vessel containing 
this gang of thieves and ruffians to proceed without 
the limits of the city." 

In that day newspapers did not employ professional 
humorists, but the editors wrote humor unintention- 
ally and in spite of indignation. Fancy sending sev- 
enty able-bodied negroes beyond the limits of New 
Orleans, in 1817, as a means of depriving the holder of 



TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 175 

a profitable sale ! If the editor had added that con- 
scienceless New York was forcing an odious trafl&c 
upon helpless but indignant Louisiana as the wicked 
British forced the odious traffic on their helpless but 
indignant American colonies the editorial would have 
been worth printing as a red-ink broadside to be 
framed for lasting preservation. 

A similar editorial item in June, 1818, says that 
" negro trading seems to be actively carried on through 
certain great villains holding their headquarters in 
New Jersey, from whence, we trust, the good people 
of that State will soon chase them. A vessel with 
thirty-six persons of color has been seized at New Or- 
leans for not having a manifest, etc., as required by 
law. She received her cargo of human beings near 
Perth Amboy. It is probable that the greater part of 
these unfortunate creatures were stolen." 

That is to say, free negroes in New Jersey were kid- 
napped, taken on board ship, and carried to New Or- 
leans for sale— an exact counterpart of one feature of 
the prohibited African slave-trade. Mr. Niles did not 
give the name of the vessel, but it was the brig Mary 
Ann, and she sailed from Perth Amboy on March 10, 
1818. 

Near the end of 1829 the schooner Lafayette sailed 
from Norfolk for New Orleans, having on board a 
cargo of more than one hundred slaves. The slaves 
rose against the crew, but were subdued, and twenty- 
five of them were "bolted down on the deck" for 
the remainder of the voyage. That was the first 
"mutiny" in the coastwise trade that I have found. 
Others more interesting followed. 
To appreciate fully the following stories the reader 



176 THE AMEEICAX SLAVE-TRADE 

must recall an act passed by the British Parliament 
in 1833, to take effect August 1, 1834. This act was, 
in one respect, the most notable in the history of hu- 
man liberty, for while in a thousand other cases men 
have done noble deeds for their own liberty, in this 
one the British nation voluntarily taxed itself to the 
extent of £20,000,000 to provide liberty for an inferior 
race. During more than thirt}^ 3^ears Great Britain 
spent regularly more than £500,000 a year on her Af- 
rican squadron and gave the lives of many of its best 
sailors for the benefit of the despised negro, and mean- 
time, at one appropriation, added £20,000,000 to all 
that expense. As a national recognition of the obliga- 
tion which the dominant race owes to all inferior races 
the work of Great Britain in connection with negro 
slavery and the slave-trade remains unequalled in the 
history of the world. 

On August 1, 1834, slaver}^ for life was forever abol- 
ished in the British nation. The legislation of all 
other nations of that day was based on the inhuman 
idea that mental and physical superiority in one race 
gave it the right to deprive inferior human beings of 
liberty and to extort from them labor for the aggran- 
dizement of the superior race. 

In the year 1830 the city of Alexandria, Va., was 
what may be called the Omaha of the human cattle 
trade. Slaves were gathered there by tradi^rs for trans- 
fer to the ever-craving maw of the Gulf States. In 
the course of the year the brig Comet was loaded there 
with slaves and cleared for New Orleans, but on the 
way she was wrecked on the False Keys of the Bahama 
group. Wreckers carried crew and slaves to Nassau, 
where the authorities held that tlie slaves were free, 



TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 177 

because, as alleged, the British laws prohibited the in- 
troduction of slaves. 

The brig Encomium, from Charleston for New Or- 
leans, with slaves, met the same fate in the same local- 
ity, with the same result to the slaves, early in 1834. 

The Enterprise, with a cargo of slaves from the Dis- 
trict of Columbia— Washington was noted for its slave 
barracoons in those days— also carrying slaves for the 
New Orleans market, was compelled by stress of 
weather to put into Bermuda on February 20, 1835. 

The "Friendly Society" of colored people of the town 
at once got out writs of habeas corpus, served them 
upon the people interested, and had all the negroes, 
seventy-eight in number, brought before the proper 
court, with their alleged owners and the master of the 
ship. It was nine o'clock at night when they appeared 
before the court. The master of the ship had striven 
to have the hearing put off until next day, hoping, no 
doubt, to go to sea, but the effort was vain. He had 
also promised to give the slaves considerable sums of 
money if they would tell the Court that they preferred 
to continue the voyage. 

Having all the slaves in court, the Chief Justice took 
his seat, called up one of the negro men, and said : 

" Your name is George Hammett ; you came in the 
brig Enterprise as a slave, and it is my duty (under- 
standing that you were kept on board that vessel 
against your wdll) to inform you that in this country 
you are free— free as any white person ; and should it 
be your wish to remain here, instead of proceeding to 
the port whither you was bound, to be sold or held to 
service as a slave, you will be protected by the au- 
thorities here ; and if you do decide to remain, you 

12 



178 THE AMEPJCAN SLAVE-TIL\DE 

will become, as I have observed, a free person, and will 
be punished for any breach or break of the laws of this 
colony ; while if you conduct yourself with propriety, 
soberness, honesty, and industry, you will meet with 
encouragement from the whole community. Do you 
therefore wish to remain and be a free person, or con- 
tinue your voyage to the vessel's destined port and re- 
main a slave ?" 

All of the slaves save a woman with five children 
declared they would remain. This one family went on 
to their destination as slaves. 

The expressive phrase of "twisting the lion's tail" 
had not been invented in those days, but twisting the 
lion's tail was much more common then than even in 
those recent years before our war with Spain had 
shown us what a real and natural bond of sympathy 
existed between the two English-speaking nations. 
And the manner in which members of Congress turned 
and twisted the lion's tail in connection with these 
slave-ship deliveries was memorable. 

As to the British, their attitude was admirably por- 
trayed by the picture of the true griffin in Ruskin's 
" Modern Painters." They were at once reposeful and 
alert, and withal ready to fulfil national obligations. 

International law, which is presumably founded on 
natural rights, demanded that all the property on 
those vessels should be held sacred for the owners, but 
straightway there arose a question as to the property 
right of masters in their slaves. Under the laws of the 
United States that right was granted [See the fugitive 
slave laws]. Under the laws of Great Britain that 
right had been everj'where abolished within her juris- 
diction on August 1, 1834. 



TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS I79 

After the matter had been fully discussed, Lord 
Palmerston said that the slaves taken from the En- 
comium and the Comet had been unlawfully freed be- 
cause when they came within British jurisdiction Brit- 
ish law recognized property in human beings. Therefore 
they would be paid for. Those of the Enterprise ar- 
rived when British soil and water were free, and would 
not be paid for. This decision was made in 1837. 
From that year property in man, as a feature of inter- 
national law, " ceased and determined for ever." 

Nevertheless, the question was to come up again. 
On October 25, 1841, the Creole^ under the command of 
Captain Robert Ensor, sailed from Richmond, Va., 
bound for New Orleans, having on board three white 
men as passengers, with the wife and child and a niece 
of the captain. In the hold were one hundred and 
thirty-five slaves for the New Orleans market. Two 
days later the Creole cleared the Capes and thereafter 
had a prosperous voyage until Sunday evening, No- 
vember 7, 1841, when she was within about twelve 
hours' sail of Nassau. 

Among the slaves was a man named Madison Wash- 
ington, who was of unusual character. He had fled 
from slavery in Virginia some time before that, and by 
the underground railway had safely reached the free 
soil of Canada. But when there he remembered his 
wife away back on the old plantation, and out of love 
for her had returned to carry her to freedom also. He 
reached the plantation in safety, but before he could 
get away with the wife he was caught by the planter. 

In those days the fate of these runaways was settled 
in advance. They were whipped unmercifully and 
then sold for the New Orleans market. To the ordi- 



180 THE AMEKICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

nary negro, to be placed on a New Orleans ship was to 
end hope. To Madison Washington it brought oppor- 
tunity for freedom. 

At eight o'clock on the night of November 7th the 
crew hove to the Creole for the night, because of the 
dangers of navigation ahead of them. At 9.30 o'clock 
it was reported to the mate Z. C. Gilford, who had the 
deck, that one of the negro men was among the female 
slaves. At that Gilford made an examination and 
found Madison Washington there. Having a very 
wrong idea of the negro's intentions in going there, 
Gifford expressed his surprise, and then, having 
brought him on deck, was about to secure him for 
punishment, when Washington suddenly resisted, a 
shot was fired by an unknown hand, the mate was 
severely wounded in the back of the head, and Wash- 
ington cried out : 

"Come on, my boys! We have commenced and 
must go through with it." 

He had planned a mutiny, and the other negroes 
were awaiting his detection in the hold as a signal for 
the assault on the crew. 

In the fight one white man was killed and several 
were wounded. No negro was hurt, and in ten minutes 
Washington controlled the ship. Then hj threats 
and promises he got her navigated into Nassau har- 
bor, where she arrived on Tuesday morning, the 9th, 
at eight o'clock. 

Of course the American consul, as in duty bound, 
at once made every effort to get the brig again under 
the command of her crew, with the slaves on board. 
The populace, including the authorities, knowing all 
about the case of the Enterprise at Bermuda, were 



TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 181 

determined that the negroes should go free, and free 
they became, though nineteen of them, who were 
identified as active in the assault on the crew, were 
taken in custody on the charges of mutiny and mur- 
der preferred by the consul and the crew. But they 
were not replaced on the Creole. 

To state the case of the slave-owners, we may quote 
the words of Henry Clay when he said that the Creole 
was carried to Nassau by " an act of mutiny and mur- 
der," and if the British authorities sanctioned " the 
enormity," "Americans would be virtually denied the 
benefits of the coastwise trade of their own country, 
because their vessels could not proceed in safety from 
one port to another with slaves on hoard.''' It is ap- 
parent that under the laws of the United States, as 
they then stood, Mr. Clay was entirely justified in 
what he said. But by the laws of Great Britain there 
was no such thing as property in man. " All men 
were born free," by her law, and the negroes who 
were held in slavery, contrary to their will, were jus- 
tified in taking the lives of their masters in order to 
obtain their natural right. Having carried the brig 
into British waters, the slaves, under British laws, 
became free ; and the result was that they all re- 
mained free except five who voluntarily continued the 
voyage to New Orleans. 

It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Joshua R. 
Giddings, a member of the House from Ohio, prepared 
a number of resolutions on the subject in which he 
sustained the natural right of the negroes to liberty 
and to use force to obtain it. These resolutions he 
took to the House, introduced them, and gave notice 
that he would call them up for consideration. For 



182 '^HE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

this he was censured by the House by a vote of one 
hundred and twenty-five to sixty-nine. Remarkable 
as it seems now, the pro-slavery members were so 
far fanatical in their pursuit of Mr. Giddings that 
they refused to allow him to defend himself or even 
explain his object in introducing the resolutions. 
Such unjust action eventually did more harm to the 
perpetrators than to anyone else — it did harm, in 
fact, to no one else. Giddings resigned, went home, 
and was returned by his constituents within five 
weeks. 

Thus the mutiny on the Creole, a coasting slaver, 
became one of the most important episodes in the "ir- 
repressible conflict" that was rising between the slave 
and the free-soil States. 

The number of slaves that were shipped in coastwise 
traders is now really a matter of conjecture, but one 
may get an idea from kindred facts. Thus the Vir- 
giiiia Times, in an article quoted in Niles's Register 
for October 8, 1836, boasts that no less than 40,000 
slaves had been sold for export from Virginia to other 
States during the fiscal year preceding, and that the 
sales had brought into the State an average of $600 
per head, or $24,000,000 all told. A letter to the Jour- 
nal of Commerce^ of New York, at about that period 
estimates the number driven {i.e., sent South on foot) 
out of the State in a year at 20,000. This would leave 
20,000 to be sent by ship. 

Another estimate may be drawn from the fact that 
the number of slaves in the Lafayette, Encomium, En- 
terprise, and Creole was near one hundred per vessel. 
Very likely that was an average coaster cargo. Now 
one Alexandria firm advertised two ships a month, 



TALES OF THE COASTWISE SLAVE-SHIPS 183 

and there was at least, on the average, a vessel a 
week from that port the year round. Norfolk was a 
port about as lively, and Baltimore and Richmond 
were not far behind. Apparently two hundred ves- 
sels carried a hundred slaves each to a Southern mar- 
ket every year from the waters of Virginia. 

In the Democratic Review, of New York, for July, 
1858, in an article entitled "Visitation and Search of 
Vessels," wherein an argument is made in favor of re- 
opening the over-sea slave-trade, the editor says of the 
over-sea and the coast trades : 

" We aver that if one is wrong, then both are 
wrong ; tJiat if one is right, then both are right. We 
enter protest against such absurd definitions and dis- 
tinctions as have been made by Congress." 



CHAPTER XVIIl 

STORY OF THE AMISTAD 

A Cuban Coastwise Slaver that may have been Used to Smug- 
gle Slaves into the United States— On the Way from Ha- 
vana to Puerto Principe the Slaves Overpowered the Crew, 
and Started Back to Africa, but were Beguiled to Long 
Island— Judicially Decided that Slaves Unlawfully Held 
have a Right to Take Human Life in a Stroke for Liberty. 

On August 26, 1839, the United States brig Wash- 
ington, Captain Thomas R. Gedney, was engaged in 
surveying the water between Gardiner's Island and 
Montauk Point, L. L, when a schooner was seen at 
anchor well in shore nearCulloden Point. There were 
a number of people on the beach with carts and horses, 
and a boat was passing to and fro between the stranger 
and the shore. 

Apparently here was a smuggler at work in broad 
daylight, and Captain Gedney at once sent a boat, 
Avith six armed men, in charge of Lieutenant Richard 
W. Meade and Passed Midshipman David D. Porter 
to investigate. They found her "a Baltimore-built 
vessel of matchless model for speed, about one hun- 
dred and twenty tons burden, and about six years old. 
On lier deck were grouped, amid various goods and 
arms, the remnant of her Ethiope crew, some decked in 
the most fantastic manner in the silks and finery pil- 

184 



STOr.Y OF TUE AMISTAD 185 

fered from the cargo, while others in a state of nudity, 
emaciated to mere skeletons, lay coiled on the decks. 

" Over the decks were scattered, in the most wanton 
and disorderly profusion, raisins, vermicelli, bread, 
rice, silk, and cotton goods. In the cabin and hold 
were the marks of the same wasteful destruction. 

''Her cargo appeared to consist of silks, crepes, 
calicoes, fancy goods of various descriptions, glass and 
hardware, bridles, saddles, holsters, pictures, looking- 
glasses, books, fruits, olives, olive-oil, and other things 
too numerous to mention." So runs an old newspa- 
per account. 

As soon as the United States officers reached her 
deck two white men came to them, one begging for 
protection, while the other, an elderly man, threw his 
arms around Lieutenant Meade and held him in an 
embrace that made the lieutenant think the man in- 
tended violence. Drawing a pistol, Meade thrust it in 
his face, when the man retreated, and his companion, 
a young man of good address, who spoke English flu- 
ently, began an explanation. 

He said his name was Jose Ruiz and that of the 
demonstrative elder was Pedro Montez. No offence 
was intended by Montez; on the contrary, his embrace 
was but a manifestation of gratitude. The queer little 
schooner, he continued, was the Amistad^ of Havana, 
where she was owned and commanded by Captain 
Ramon Ferrar. She had sailed from Havana on June 
27th, bound for Guanaja, in the Cuban state of Puerto 
Principe, but on the night of June 30th the slaves on 
tlie ship had mutinied, killed the captain and cook, 
sent the two sailors ashore in the boat, and ordered 
him (Ruiz) and Pedro Montez to navigate the ship to 



18(3 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Africa. Under fear of death the Amistad had been 
steered toward the east by day, but at night she had 
been headed for the United States. So it had hap- 
pened that they had been for several days within a 
few miles of Long Island, and had finally anchored 
where found in order to get food and water. 

As to the negroes, Ruiz said that one called Antonio 
w^as the property of the slain captain, three belonged 
to Pedro Montez, while the remainder, forty-nine in 
number, were his own property. 

On hearing that, Meade sent Porter ashore with four 
men to round np the blacks there. The blacks on 
shore got into their boat and started rowing out to 
the schooner, but Porter stopped them with a pistol 
shot, and took them on board the schooner under 
guard. Once there, their leader, called Cinque, leaped 
overboard with a belt containing three hundred doub- 
loons, and went "diving and swimming like a fish" 
for shore, but he was hauled back on board with a 
boat-hook in the hands of a grinning quartermaster. 

Meantime Captain Gedney had brought the WasJi- 
ingion alongside, and on hearing the reports of his 
officers decided to take the schooner to New London, 
where he libelled her for salvage. And then the 
trouble began. 

Senor A. Calderon, who was then the Spanish Min- 
ister at Washington, at once demanded the vessel and 
cargo under the treaty with Spain dated 1795. One 
article of this treaty was quoted as exactly covering 
the case. It said : 

" All ships and merchandise of loJiat nature soever, 
iD?ilc?L sliall he rescued out of the Jiands of any pi- 
rates or robbers on the high seas shall be brought into 



STORY OF THE x\MISTAD 187 

some port of either State and shall be delivered to the 
custody of the officers of that port, in order to he 
taken care of and restored entire to the true proprietor 
as soon as due and sufficient proof shall be made con- 
cerning the property thereof." 

The words in italics were so emphasized when quoted 
in Senor Calderon's demand. Very naturally the 
Washington officials were entirely willing to grant the 
demand. Under our laws slaves were property, and 
here were negroes in charge of a ship which they had 
taken by force from its owner. Further than that, 
these negroes were, according to the papers of the 
ship and the passports of the two Spaniards Ruiz and 
Montez, slaves. Ruiz, for instance, produced a pass- 
port issued by the captain of the port of Havana, in 
due form, dated 26 de junio (June) del839, which read 
in Spanish thus: "Concedo licencia, a cuarenta y 
nueva negros ladinos, nombrados," etc. The names 
of the negroes followed. 

The Spanish words are given because of their bear- 
ing on the case, as will appear further on. So far as 
the papers appeared, everything was in proper form. 

Meantime, however, the negroes, who were put in 
jail at New London, had found friends who were will- 
ing to spend money to see that they had a fair trial, 
were that possible in the existing state of civilization. 
These friends saw the passport which Ruiz exhibited 
as proof of ownership of the forty-nine negroes, and 
they were able to translate it. The translation offered 
by Ruiz and accepted by our Government, and so 
printed in a message of the President on the subject, 
read as follows : 

"I concede license to forty nine sound negroes," la^ 



283 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TEADE 

dinos being rendered as sound. As a matter of fact, 
ladlnos was a local term used in Cuban law to desig- 
nate slaves born in tlie country or imported previous 
to 1820. The translation was a fraud, and tlie begin- 
ning of a shameful attempt to deceive the people of 
the United States, including the courts. For it was 
at once learned that neither the forty-nine negroes 
claimed by Ruiz nor the three claimed by Montez 
were ladinos. Cuban slave-dealers had imported them 
from Africa in a Portuguese vessel called Tegora, on 
June 12th— fifteen days only before they were taken 
on board the Amistad. They had been landed near 
Havana, and taken to a barracoon near the city, and 
there, on June 22d, Ruiz and Montez had purchased 
them. The purchasers had then obtained the usual 
permit for taking ladinos coastwise. But how it had 
happened that the Havana official was willing to issue 
a ladino permit, when these negroes had been landed 
contrary to the Spanish law, does not appear in the 
printed proceedings. 

In short, the abolitionists said these negroes, that 
had been taken from their African homes and carried 
to Cuba, contrary to the laws of Spain, were not slaves 
but freemen, and when they were confined as slaves on 
the Amistad they had the natural right to rise against 
those who restrained them, and to regain liberty even 
if they had to kill two men to do it. 

So issue was joined, and in the course of time (1841) 
the case reached the United States Supreme Court, 
where Justice Story delivered the opinion of the court. 
He said that in ord<^r to sustain the claims of Ruiz 
and Montez "it is essential to establish: 1st. That 
these negroes under all the circumstances fall within 



STORY OF THE AMISTAD 189 

the description of mercliandise in the sense of the 
treaty. 2d. That there has been a rescue of them on 
the high seas out of the hands of the pirates and rob- 
bers, which, in the present case, can only be by show- 
ing that they themselves are pirates and robbers. 3d. 
That Ruiz and Montez, the asserted proprietors, are 
the true proprietors, and have established their title 
by competent proof."* 

As to the first point, if the negroes had been law- 
fully held as slaves under the Spanish law, said the 
Justice, " we see no reason why they may not justly be 
deemed, within the intent of the treaty, to be includ- 
ed under the denomination of merchandise. . . . 
But admitting this, it is clear, in our opinion . . . 
it is plain beyond controversy, if we examine the evi- 
dence, they never were the lawful slaves of Ruiz or 
Montez, or of any other Spanish subject. ... If, 
then, these negroes are not slaves . . . there is no 
pretence to say they are pirates or robbers. But it is 
argued on behalf of the United States that the ship 
and cargo and negroes were duly documented as be- 
longing to Spanish subjects, and this court has no 
right to look behind these documents. ... To 
this argument we can in nowise assent. . . . The 
very language of the ninth article of the treaty of 
1795 requires the proprietor to make due and suffi- 
cient proof of his property. And how can that proof 
be deemed either due or sufficient which is but a 
connected and stained tissue of fraud? Upon the 
whole, our opinion is . . . that the said negroes 
be declared free, and be dismissed from the custody 
of the court, and go without date." 

♦Peters's U. S. Reports, vol. 15, p. 592. 



190 THE AMERICxVN SLAVE-TRADE 

The narrative of events has been interrupted in or- 
der to give the exact status of these negroes under our 
laws of that date, because we are thus enabled to ap- 
preciate better the attitude of the Government officials 
toward this case. The Spanish Minister, Calderon, 
claimed them not only as slaves but as murderers, and 
asserted that if the leaders were executed for crime in 
Cuba the effect would be more salutary than if they 
were convicted and executed in Connecticut. Our 
Government officials were anxious to sustain this 
view. United States District Attorney William S. 
Holabird, of Connecticut, was so anxious in the matter 
that he wrote to Secretary of State Forsyth to ask 
whether there were no treaty stipulations under which 
the negroes might be given up "before our court sits." 

There were none, but Secretary Forsyth instructed 
him to " take care that no proceedings of your Circuit 
Court, or any other judicial tribunal, place the vessel, 
cargo, or slaves beyond the control of the Federal Ex- 
ecutive." Attornej^-General Grundy wrote an opin- 
ion saying he could not see any "legal principle" 
that would justify the Government in questioning 
" the papers clearing the vessel from one Spanish port 
to another." He added that as the negroes were 
charged with violating Spanish law they ought to be 
delivered over to Spanish courts for trial in order that 
the guilty "might not escape punishment." The 
President, he thought, ought to order the vessel, cargo, 
and negroes delivered to the Spanish Minister at once 
without any investigation. 

President Van Buren did not go so far as that, 
but Captain Gedney was ordered to hold his vessel in 
readiness to go to Cuba with the negroes, and for the 



STOKV OF THE AillSTAD 191 

purpose of giving testimony " in any proceedings that 
may be ordered by the authorities of Cuba in the mat- 
ter." This was done before the court in Connecticut 
had assembled to consider the case. Worse yet, the 
Cabinet, in anticipation that the District Court would 
decide against the liberty of the negroes, prepared to 
hui-ry them off to Cuba before an appeal could be taken. 
The proof of this is found in a letter written by Secre- 
tary Forsyth in which he said : "I have to state, by 
direction of the President, that if the decision of the 
court is such as is anticipated, the order of the Presi- 
dent is to be carried into execution unless an appeal 
shall actually have been interposed. You are not to 
take it for granted that it will be interposed." 

Had the Court decided as Van Baren hoped it would 
do, the negroes would have been marched from the 
court-room to the United States ship WasMngton, 
and sent, as fast as wind and tide could drive her, to 
Havana. 

By the decision of the Court the negroes freed were 
only those that had been imported from Africa in the 
Portuguese ship Tegora. Antonio, claimed as the 
property of Captain Ferrar, of the Amlstad, was by 
law a slave, and he would have been delivered to the 
Spanish authorities had not some conductors on the 
underground railroad come to his aid. He had simply 
disappeared. The schooner was sold for salvage. 
Mills' Register (October 31, 1840) says she was old 
and Cuban built. She sold for $245. 

Drake in his "Revelations of a Slave-Smuggler" 
speaks of the Amistad as a schooner that belonged to 
a joint-stock slave-smuggling company "connected 
with leading American and Spanish mercantile 



192 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

houses," that used "one of the Bay Islands, so called, 
near the coast of Honduras," as a station where slaves 
were landed after the voyage from Africa. They were 
there restored to health and taught plantation work 
before being sent to market. 

It is not unlikely that the energy shown by the 
Washington authorities in their efforts to return these 
free negroes to Cuba was due in part to pressure 
brought by New York merchants of prominence. 

But the case of the Amistad by no means came to 
an end with the comprehensive decision of the Su- 
preme Court. The Spanish authorities appealed to 
Congress for indemnity in behalf of Ruiz and Montez. 
Our executive branch of the Government was entirely 
willing to grant this appeal, and on April 10, 1844, 
Congressman Charles J. Ingersoll, of the House Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, brought in a report in which 
the committee "entirely concur with the President's 
intimation" that "in conformity with every principle 
of law and justice" the United States ought to pay for 
the Amistad negroes. It was asserted by them that 
" to set the slaves free cardinal principles were vio- 
lated"; and that "in defiance of the law of treaties, 
of the law of all civilized nations and of primary prin- 
ciples of universal jurisprudence, were these much- 
abused foreigners stripped of their property ; and the 
pirates who, by revolt, murder, and robbery, had de- 
prived them of it, set free." 

By an examination of the documents (including 
House Reports No. 426, 28tli Congress, 1st Session) it 
appears that Ingersoll in making this report delib- 
erately falsified dates, and built his argument on a 
false date. 




B^B^BM 



STORY OF THE AMISTAD 193 

The desired appropriation was not made, but as late 
as February 2, 1858, the claim was before Congress 
with a recommendation from President Buchanan that 
it be paid. But it never was paid, and it might now 
be forgotten but for the fact that the Supreme Court 
of the United States, when it heard the case, decided 
then, for tlie first time, that black men carried from 
their homes in Africa as slaves had tlie right, when 
seeking their liberty, to kill any who would deprive 
tliem of it. 



13 



CHAPTER XIX 

LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 

Notable Slave-ships that Plied between the African Coast and 
the United States just before the Civil War— When the 
Wanderer Carried the Flag of the New York Yacht Club 
to the Congo— Troubles of a Smuggler as described in his 
Letter-book— A Movement for Legally Reopening the 
Slave-trade— Dream of a Slave Empire. 

The most remarkable evidence regarding the smug- 
gling of slaves into the United States in the decade 
before the civil war is found in a series of letters 
copied from the letter-book of Charles A. L. Lamar, 
a citizen of Savannah and a member of a family of 
high social position. These letters were rescued from 
a paper mill by an unnamed writer and printed in the 
North American. JlerAeio for November, 1886. 

The first letter referring to the slave-trade was 
dated on October ol, 1857, and was written to Lamar's 
father. It says : 

"You need give yourself no uneasiness about the 
Africans and the Slave-trade. I was astonished at 
some of the remarks in j^our letter; they show that 
you have been imbued with something more than the 
' panic ' by 3^our associations North and with Mrs. . 

194 



LATTEK-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS I95 

For example, you say ' An expedition to the moon 
would have been equall}^ sensible, and no more con- 
trary to the laws of Providence. May God forgive 
you for all your attempts to violate His will and His 
laws.' Following out the same train of thought, 
where would it land the whole Southern community ? 

"You need not reproach yourself for not interposing 
with a stronger power than argument and persuasion 
to prevent the expedition. There was nothing you or 
the Government could have done to prevent it. Let 
all the sin be on me. I am willing to assume it all." 

A letter of an earlier date (July 27, 1857) tells some- 
thing more about this expedition, and also gives a 
very good insight into the way President Buchanan's 
administration got on with the slave smugglers. The 
letter was written to Howell Cobb, Secretary of the 
Treasury. It says : 

" I am loath to trouble you again, but your damned 
sap-head of a collector refuses to do anything. . . . 
He detained my vessel eight days after she was ready 
for sea, and after she had applied for her clearance 
papers. Mr. Boston said she was not 'seized,' but 
merely 'detained.' He said the department would 
respond to any demand I might make for damages, 
etc. The District Attorney and all the lawyers to 
whom he applied for advice told him that there was 
nothing to cause suspicion to attach to the vessel." 

A bill for damages follows : "Bight days' detention 
at $150 per day, $1,200; wharfage, etc., $120; total, 
$1,320." It is not unlikely that the bill was paid. 
Then comes this frank statement : 

" I did not, in my other communication, disclaim 
any intention of embarking in the Slave-trade, nor did 



196 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

I say anything to warrant you in supposing 1 was not 
engaged in it. I simply declared that there was noth- 
ing on board except what was on the manifest, and 
that I insist there was nothing suspicious on it. I will 
now say, as the vessel is 1,000 miles from here, that 
she was as unfit for a voj^age to import negroes as any 
vessel in port. . . . What she may hereafter do 
is another matter. . . . John Boston had her de- 
tained because he says he knew she would be engaged 
in the trade, and had heard that from men who con- 
fessed that they were eavesdroppers, who hung around 
my windows to listen to all conversations that took 
place. ... I am coming on to bore you in person 
unless you will yield to my short epistles." 

That to an officer who had sworn he would execute 
the laws ! 

We find in a letter of November 7th, of the same 
year, to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, that the 
venture went awry. The letter reads : 

" I am truly glad to find that Grant [the slave cap- 
tain] is at least honest. He has acted badly and sac- 
rificed our interest most shamefully. His clearance 
papers would have taken him anywhere he wanted to 
go, unmolested. ... He knew the vessel was 
fitted for nothing else but the trade, and ought to 
have known we would want to send her back. . . . 
Why did he not go to the Coast? He knew before he 
undertook the command that there were armed vessels 
on the Coast, and a number of them. He ought to have 
known that lie was running no risk — that the cap- 
tain and crew are always discharged. The captain of 
the Albert Devereux was here the other day. The 
British cruisers even let him take his gold. If Grant 



LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 197 

had been equal to the emergency we would all have 
been easy in money matters." 

A letter of December 23, 1857, to Theodore Johnson, 
of New Orleans, says: "In reference to Grant, dis- 
charge him, pay him nothing, and hope with me that 
he will speedily land in hell." 

Much talk of Lamar's financial straits follows, and 
then we learn the name of the vessel. "Something 
ought to be done at once with the Rawlins,'' he says. 

A letter dated three days later invites L. Viana, of 
158 Pearl Street, New York, to join in the slave-smug- 
gling business, and then we learn that " Captain Will- 
iam Ross Postell ... a Gent, reliable in every 
way, and a thorough sailor and navigator," was se- 
cured to take command of the E. A. RaioUns. An 
era of prosperity came to the smugglers, it seems, for 
the letters show that, in addition to the Rawlins, the 
Richard CohcUii and the notorious yacht Wanderer 
were put into the trade. Lamar even contemplated 
buying a steamer. Here is what he wrote about the 
steamer on May 24, 1858, to "Thomas Barrett, Esq., 
Augusta," italics as in the original : 

I have in contemplation, if I can raise the necessary 
amount of money, the fitting out of an expedition to go to 
the coast of Africa for a cargo of African apprentices to he 
bound for the term of their natural lives, and would like your 
co-operation. No subscription will be received for a less 
amoiint than $5,000. The amount to be raised is $300,000. 
I will take $20,000 of the stock and go myself. I propose to 
purchase the " Vigo," an iron screw steamer of 1,750 tons, now 
in Liverpool for sale at £30,000 cash. She cost £75,000. G. 
B. Lamar can give you a description of her. . . . She is 
as good as new, save her boilers, and they can be used for 
several months. If I can buy her I wih put six Paixhan 



198 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TKADE 

guns on deck and man her with as good men as can be found 
in the South. The fighting men will all be stockholders and 
gentlemen some of whom are known to yon, if not person- 
ally, by reputation. My estimate runs thus : 

Steamer $150,000 ; repairs, guns, small arms, 
coal, etc., $50,000 $200,000 

Supplies, $25,000 ; money for purchase of 

cargo, $75,000 100,000 

$300,000 

I have, as you know, a vessel now afloat, but it is, in my 
mind, extremely doubtful whether she gets in safely, as she 
had to wait on the Coast until her cargo could be collected. 
If she ever gets clear of the Coast, they can't catch her. She 
ought to be due in from ten to thirty days. I have another 
now ready to sail which has orders to order a cargo of 1,000 
or 1,200 to be in readiness the 1st of September, but to be 
kept, if necessarj^ until the 1st of October — which I intend for 
the steamer— so that no delay may occur. With her I can 
make the voyage there and back, including all detentions, bad 
weather, if I encounter it, etc., in ninety days, certain and 
sure ; and the negroes can be sold as fast as landed at $650 
per head. I can contract for them " to arrive " at that figure, 
cash. The "Vigo " can bring 2,000 with ease and comfort, and 
I apprehend no difficulty or risk, save shipwreck, and that 
you can insure against. I can get one of the first lieutenants 
in the navy to go out in command, and we can whip any- 
thing if attacked, that is on that station, either English or 
American. But I would not propose to fight ; for the " Vigo " 
can steam eleven knots, Avhich would put us out of the way 
of any of the cruisers. 

In an estimate of the steamer's profits sent to 
William Roundtree, of Nashville, Tenn., Lamar placed 
the cost at 8300,000, and the income— " 1,200 negroes 
at 1650, $780,000, wliicli leaves net profit and steamer 
on hand, $480,000." 



LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 199 

In some way this scheme fell down ; probably he 
could not raise the capital. But it is worth telling, as 
showing the drift of affairs in our slave territory at 
that time. 

As to his proposal to introduce Africans as appren- 
tices for life, to evade the letter of the law, he said in a 
letter to Secretary Cobb, in 1858: "I would land the 
cargo on the levee in New Orleans and test the legal- 
ity of the matter in the courts of the United States." 
And because Cobb refused to sanction such a plan, 
Lamar asked sternly in another letter, " Has Northern 
public opinion, then, acquired the force of law?" 

The yacht Wanderer, of which Lamar makes men- 
tion, was without doubt the most notable slave-smug- 
gler known to the trade, and her story is therefore 
well worth giving here. 

According to the records of the New York Yacht 
Club, the Wanderer was built by James G. Bay lis, at 
Port Jefferson, L. I., for Mr. J. D. Johnson, a wealthy 
member of the club. She was launched in June, 1857. 
Her dimensions were : Length over all, 104 feet ; keel, 
95 ; beam, 26.5 ; depth of hold, 10.5 ; draught, 10.5. 
Her mainmast was 84 feet long and its topmast 35. 
The main boom was 65 feet long, and its gaff and the 
main gaff 35. The bowsprit was 23 feet outboard. 

Captain Thomas Hawkins superintended her while 
on the blocks, and " to hear him tell it," said one of 
his friends to me, " you'd think she could fly instead 
of sailing." He added : "She was, however, a very 
fast schooner." A beautiful painting of the Wan- 
derer hangs in the Yacht Club's reception room at 
this writing (1900). 

Mr. Johnson sold the schooner to Captain W. C. 



JOO 



THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 



Corrie, who was elected a member of the New York 
Yacht Club on May 29, 1858, and he sailed for the 
South with her at once. Under the rules of the club 
Corrie was captain of the yacht. Her sailing master 
was a brother of the late Admiral Semmes, of the Con- 
federate navy. Captain Corrie took her to Charles- 
ton, and there cleared out for Trinidad, as if on a 
pleasure voyage, although, as a matter of fact, she 
had a slaver outfit in her hold. Captain Egbert Farn- 
ham, a man of an adventurous career— he had been a 
famous overland rider in his time, and, it is said, one 
of Walker's Nicaragua tilibusters— went along as su- 
percargo. 

From Trinidad the Wanderer went to St. Helena, 
and thence to the Congo Kiver. She was still flying 
the American flag and that of the New York Yacht 
Club, of course, and when the British war-ship Me- 
dusa was found cruising for slavers on the Congo 
coast. Captain Corrie ran alongside and remained 
with her several days (according to the newspapers), 
during which he entertained the British officers with 
the best he had, and was in turn entertained in royal 
fashion on the war-ship. Places of interest ashore 
were visited In company. There was a race with a 
British yacht off the coast, in which, of course, the 
Wanderer won handsomely. 

Farnham told the reporters, after his return, that on 
one occasion, after the wine had mellowed the British 
officers sufficiently, they were invited to inspect the 
Wanderer to see whether she was not a slaver, whereat 
the whole party laughed joyously. The idea that such 
a magnificent floating palace as the Wanderer was to 
be used as a slaver did seem extremely ridiculous to 



LATTEK-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 201 

tliem. Then the British sailed away and the Wan- 
derer slipped away up the Congo to the barracoons. 

The owners of the Wanderer^ besides Corrie, were 
Charles A. L. Lamar, of Savannah ; N. C. Trowbridge, 
of New Orleans ; Captain A. C. McGhee, of Columbus, 
Ga. ; Richard Bickerson, of Richmond, Va., and Ben- 
jamin Davis, of Charleston, S. C. Captain McGhee, in 
an interview with a correspondent of the New York 
Satij printed four or five years ago, said that the cargo 
purchased consisted chiefly of young negroes from thir- 
teen to eighteen years of age, and that seven hundred 
and fifty were taken on board. 

That she got clear of the slave-coast with a fall load 
is beyond doubt. The exact date of her arrival on the 
Georgia coast is not known, but it was not far from 
December 2, 1808. The first mention of the matter in 
print is found in the Savannah Repidtlican of Decem- 
ber 11th of that year, wherein it is asserted that her 
cargo was landed "in the neighborhood of St. An- 
drews Sound, near Brunswick," and that "part of 
her cargo was subsequently sent up Saltilla River on 
board a steamer." 

The Savannah RepidjUcan said a few days later that 
it had heard " that the slaves were landed on Jek}^ 
Island, for which privilege, it is said, the negro traders 
paid $15,000, and that a steamboat from this city went 
down and brought one hundred and fifty of them past 
Savannah and up the river to a plantation from whence 
they were scattered over the country." 

Captain McGhee tells how this was done : 

"The most difficult part of the voyage was to get 
into port. The only way to enter the mouth of the 
Savannah River was under the black muzzles of the 



202 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

guns of tlie fort, and it would have been madness to 
attempt to enter with that contraband cargo in open 
daylight. Instead Captain Semmes crept into the 
mouth of the Great Ogeechee b}^ night and ascended 
the river to the big swamp, and there lay concealed 
while he communicated with Lamar in Savannah. 

"Lamar thereupon announced that he was going to 
give a grand ball in honor of the officers and garrison 
of the fort, and insisted that the soldiers, as well as 
their superiors, should partake of the good cheer. 
When the gayety was at its height the Wajulerer stole 
into the river and passed the guns of the fort unchal- 
lenged in the darkness and made her way to Lamar's 
plantations, some distance up the river. The human 
cargo was soon disembarked and placed under the 
charge of the old rice-field negroes, who were nearly 
as savage as the new importations." 

According, however, to a letter written by Lamar 
to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, on December 
18th, the smugglers were in trouble enough in spite 
of successful tricks, for United States District At- 
torney Ganahl had moved in the matter at once, and 
Lamar wrote : 

I returned from Augusta this morning. I distributed the 
negroes as best I could ; but I tell you things are in a bell of 
a fix ; no certainty about anything. The Goveniment has em- 
ployed H. R. Jackson to assist in the prosecution, and are 
determined to press matters to the utmost extremity. The 
yacht has been seized. The examination commenced to-day 
and will continue thirty days, at the rate they are going on. 
They have all the pilots and men who took the yacht to Bruns- 
wick here to testify. She loill be lost certain and sure, if not 
the negroes. Dr. Hazlehurst testified that he attended the 
negroes and swore they were Africans, and of recent importa- 



LATTEE-DAY SLAVE SJifUGGLEES 203 

tion. ... I don't calculate to get a new dollar for an old 
one. All these men must be hrihed. I must be paid for my 
time, trouble, and advances. . . . Six of those who were 
left at Mont's, who were sick, died yesterday. I think the 
whole of them now sick will die. They are too enfeebled to 
administer medicine to. I am paying fifty cents a day each 
for all those I took up the country. It was the best I could 
do. ... I tell you hell is to pay. I don't think they will 
discharge the men, but turn them over for trial. 

Nor were his troubles solely with the Government 
officials. In a letter to Theodore Johnson, of New Or- 
leans, lie says that some of the planters with whom the 
negroes were left for safe keeping were proving recre- 
ant to the trust. He says : 

I am astonished at what Governor Phiniz has wi-itten me. 
. . . The idea of a man's taking negroes to keep at fifty 
cents a head per day, and then refusing to give them up when 
demanded, simply because the law does not recognize them 
as property, is worse than stealing. 

A letter from Lamar to " C. C. Cook, Esq., Blakely, 
Georgia," is of interest here, though I am not able to 
say definitely that it refers to the Wanderer, for Lamar 
had two other slavers afloat. The italics are in the 
original : 

You are aware that it is a risky business. I lost two out of 
three. To be sure, at first knew nothing of the business. I 
have learned something since, and I hope I can put my infor- 
mation to some account. I have been in for " grandeur," and 
been fighting for a principle. Now I am in for the dollars. 

Meantime arrests had been made. Captain Corrie 
was taken in custody on January 22, 1859. The date 
of Lamar's arrest is not recorded, as far as I can 
learn. 



204 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

From a letter addressed to " Captain N. D. Brown," 
who was apparently one of the men under arrest, it 
appears that while in trouble himself, Lamar still 
stood by some of his crew, for he says : 

Your attorneys will visit you before the trial. If a true 
bill be found against you by the grand jury, it will be done 
upon the evidence of Club and Harris, and of course they will 
testify to the same thing. In that case I think you all ought 
to leave, and I will make arrangements for you to do so, if you 
agree with me. I have offered Club and Harris $5,000 not to 
testify ; but the Government is also trying to buy them. 
. . . I am afraid they will convict me, but my case is only 
seven years and a fine. If I find they are likely to do so, I 
shall go to Cuba until I make some compromise with the 
Government. 

The distribution of the negroes was accomplished in 
the meantime. Captain Frazier, of the river-steamer 
Augusta, testified that he carried one hundred and 
seventy-two of the negroes from Jekyl Island to a 
plantation lying two miles below Augusta. It is likely 
that the ball mentioned by Captain McGhee was given 
when this cargo was taken up the river past Savannah 
to Augusta. 

Meantime the news had created a deal of excite- 
ment in ever}'" part of the country. Congress took up 
the matter. On motion of Senator Henr}'" Wilson the 
Senate called on President Buchanan for all the facts 
that the Government had. The document containing 
the President's reply is a leaflet. He said; "I concur 
with the Attorney-General [J. S. Black] in the opinion 
that it would be incompatible with the public interest 
at this time to communicate the correspondence with 
the officers of the Government at Savannah, or the 



LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 205 

instructions which they have received." He added a 
promise to "make every practicable effort" to dis- 
cover "all the guilty parties and to bring them to 
justice." 

As usual, the smugglers escaped, and the Wanderer 
was condemned. She was sold at auction, and was 
bid in by her former owners at a fourth of her value 
as a merchant schooner. 

Captain McGhee, already quoted in telling of the 
final results of the voyage, said that the " slaves that 
had been purchased for a few beads and bandanna 
handkerchiefs were sold in the market for from $600 
to $700 apiece. The owners of the vessel paid Cap- 
tain Semmes $3,500 for his services and cleared up- 
ward of $10,000 apiece on the venture for themselves. 

Lamar's letters do not quite agree with this so far 
as he was concerned personally. " I have been badly 
swindled," he says, "by getting into the hands of 
rascals and vagabonds. I am out of pocket on the 
Wanderer — had to assume all the responsibility, pay 
all the money, and do all the work." 

It is fair to presume that he actually got back more 
dollars than he put in, but considered that he had 
lost his time — had been inadequately paid for it. 

On July 21, 1859, Lamar wrote to his friend Trow- 
bridge, at New Orleans, saying, "The Wanderer is 
going to China, and may return with coolies. They 
are worth from $340 to $350 each in Cuba, and cost 
but $12 and their passage." It is likely she did not 
go on this voyage. McGrhee said, at any rate, that 
"In the spring of 1859 the Wanderer again sailed 
for the west coast of Africa, and again Captain 
Semmes found King Dahominey ready to trade on the 



206 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

most liberal terms. On the second occasion he had to 
go further up the river to secure the cargo, but he 
succeeded in delivering six hundred captives at the 
mouth of the river. They were more intelligent than 
the first cargo, lighter in color, and better in many 
respects than those captured nearer the coast. A 
number of them died during the voyage, and the 
Wanderer was put to her best speed on several occa- 
sions to get away from undesirable acquaintances, but 
she was never overhauled, and she arrived off the 
Georgia coast in December. She was caught in a vio- 
lent gale, and in attempting to enter Jekyl Creek, 
between Jekyl and Cumberland Islands, she ran 
aground one stormy night, and a number of the cap- 
tives escaped from the hold and Jumped into the sea 
and were drowned. . . . The negroes were sent to 
New Orleans and sold, except a few that were scat- 
tered about among the Georgia planters. The profits 
were quite as large as from the first expedition, and 
but for the breaking out of the war and the blockad- 
ing of the port at Savannah, the Wanderer might 
have made another voyage in 1860. As it was, she 
was hemmed up in the river by the blockade and 
finally sold to the Confederate Government." 

Lamar wrote a letter regarding this second voyage 
that is interesting as showing the kind of a heart 
he had. He said : 

The man who went on her before would like to go again, 
but he made an extraordinary claim the last time, and it, of 
course, was not settled in full — and he might take some ad- 
vantage and throw us, to pay off any feeling he might have 
against the old company. He claimed he was to have re- 
ceived $30 a head for every one who had life in him, that was 



LATTER-DAY SLAVE S:\rLTTGLEES 207 

landed, independent of Lis condition, even though he might 
die before he could be housed. Such was not the contract. 

Imagine the scene portrayed by this letter. There 
on tlie banks of Jekyl Island lay the negroes, dying 
because of the torments they had endured, while La- 
mar and tlie captain stood by quarrelling over the 
blood money. 

In the record of the meetings of the New York 
Yacht Club for 1859 (a thin little 12mo manuscript 
volume) can be found, under the date of Febru- 
ary 3, a preamble and resolutions expelling Corrie 
from the club and erasing the name of the Wanderer 
from the club's squadron list. The club did this not 
only because Corrie had violated the law, "but more 
especially from his being engaged in a traffic repug- 
nant to humanity and to the moral sense of the mem- 
bers of this association." 

There were man}^ slavers living in New York then, 
but they were not considered fit for membership in 
the New York Yacht Club. 

According to Lamar's letter-book, the Wanderer 
was stolen out of Savannah, after the second voyage 
to Africa, by a Captain D. S. Martin. "He has un- 
doubtedly gone to the coast of Africa for a cargo of 
negroes," says Lamar ; " and if he is as smart there as 
he has been here, he will get one." 

The Wanderer was eventually captured by the 
Federal forces, and was, for a time, used as revenue 
cutter at Pensacola. Then she was sold at auction 
and was put into the cocoanut trade by a firm deal- 
ing with the islands on the north coast of Honduras, 
and there she remained until driven ashore on Cape 



208 THE AMEEICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Henry, where her bones found a last resting-place. 
Lamar was killed in battle during the civil war. 

One might tell in considerable detail, too, the story 
of the slaver Clotilde^ a schooner of three hundred 
and twentj^-seven tons built by Captain Timothy 
Meagher on the Mobile River late in the fall of 1858. 
Timothy bought one hundred and seventy-five prime 
slaves in Africa, and landed them without the loss of 
one (a most humane voyage) near Mobile City. But it 
did not pay. The negroes cost too much ($8,640 gold, 
besides ninety cases of rum and eight cases of cloths), 
and only twenty-five could be sold, because of the 
discovery of the importation and the rush of officials 
for prize mone}^ The Captain sunk in all nearly 
$100,000. 

As to the extent of the smuggling Stephen A. 
Douglas said in public that he believed 15,000 slaves 
were smuggled into the United States in 1859. A 
correspondent wrote to the Tribune in 1860 that 
"twelve vessels will discharge their living freight 
upon our shores within ninety days from the 1st of 
June last." Douglas's position on the slaver ques- 
tion cost him dearly — he failed of election as Presi- 
dent because of it. 

In spite of a pretence of prosecuting the slavers de- 
tected in their work, the Government in those days 
practicall}'' aided them by failing to prosecute them to 
conviction for the crime committed. Out of sixty 
persons arrested as slavers, "who have been bailed 
from the first day of Ma}^, 1852, to the first day of 
May, 1862," says a report made by Secretary of the 
Interior Caleb B. Smith, the following disposition had 
been made : Eight cases were still pending; nine had 



LATTEE-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLEKS 209 

been tried and acquitted by the jury ; no bill had 
been found in two cases; in one case "Defendant 
could not be found, but the bond was not forfeited " ; 
in another, "Defendant surrendered his bail, but af- 
terward escaped." In all other instances the case was 
dismissed or a nolle was entered. 

In one of Lamar's letters was a reference to what he 
calls his missionary work, and that is a subject need- 
ing further notice. An examination of newspapers 
and periodicals shows that many slave-owners had a 
strong desire for the expansion of the slave territory. 
Filibustering expeditions like that of Walker to Nica- 
ragua -grew out of it. Pollard in his " Black Dia- 
monds" speaks of Walker as one of a number of men 
who looked over the whole territory bordering on the 
Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico as a vast field 
for slave-holders to acquire in order that they might 
make of it a slave empire that should supply the world 
with cotton, coffee, sugar, and other staples, all to be 
produced by slave labor for the benefit of the domi- 
nant race. Pollard called the dream magnificent. 

Then there was the plan for buying Cuba which 
Buchanan aided, as already mentioned. Spain could 
have had $100,000,000 for the island then. 

In addition to these evidences of restlessness were 
the efforts made to reopen the slave-trade between 
Africa and the United States. 

In Be Bow's for November, 1858, is the following : 

"It cannot be denied that the Southern States- 
more especially those in which are grown the great 
staples of cotton, sugar, and rice— demand a greater 
number of negro laborers than can now possibly be 

14 



210 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

acquired by natural increase or from those home 
sources which have hitherto yielded but a sparse 
supply." 

The price of slaves was increasing rapidly, the 
writer continues. Quotations from reports of auction 
sales showed that " the price has already reached that 
point which is beyond the means of small planters." 
Able men sold as high as $1,835 cash. The lowest 
price for an adult at a sale quoted was "Olivia, $1,- 
140." There was, of course, but one remedy — the re- 
opening of the African slave-trade. 

This is a fair sample of many similar appeals in 
periodicals. Pamphlets were printed and circulated. 
One of them made a most potent appeal to all the 
merchants and manufacturers having trade with slave- 
owners. The character of the appeal appears from its 
title, " Southern Wealth and Northern Profits." It 
may be found in the libraries. 

Meantime conventions were called wherein orators 
could proclaim views which were, of course, printed 
afterward in the newspapers. It was " a campaign of 
education." 

P^or instance, there was the convention of May 10, 
1858, held at Montgomery, Ala. Spratt, of South Car- 
olina, from the committee on the slave-trade, intro- 
duced the following resolutions (quoted in Du Bois) : 

"Resolved, That slavery is right, and that, being right, there 
can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation. 

" Resolved, That it is expedient and proper that the foreign 
slave-trade should be reopened, and that this convention will 
lend its influence to any legitimate measure to that end." 

When some of the more conservative men present 
mildly objected, Yancey declared that "if it is right 



LATTEK-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS 211 

to buy slaves in Virginia and carry tiiem to New Or- 
leans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, 
or Africa, and carry them there ? " 

His question was, of course, unanswerable. He 
might also have said that if it was right to own 
negroes it was right to buy them wherever they were 
on sale and take them to any place where they were 
needed. Although he did not know it, he was clear- 
ing the much-befogged road leading to the point of 
view from which might be seen the real evil principle 
at the bottom of slavery. 

At Vicksburg, in 1859, a convention of commercial 
men resolved by a vote of forty to nineteen that "all 
laws, State or Federal, prohibiting the African slave- 
trade ought to be repealed;" also that "the conven- 
tion raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the 
best sermons in favor of reopening the African Slave- 
trade ! " 

The reopening of the trade was also advocated on 
the floor of Congress. Omitting many quotations 
that might be made from the words of slave-holding 
Congressmen it will be sufficient to note what two 
who were representative of their class said. Alexan- 
der Stephens, in his farewell address to his constitu- 
ents, according to reputable reports, used these 
words : " Slave-States cannot be made without Afri- 
cans. . . . [My object is] to bring clearly to your 
mind the great truth that without an increase of Afri- 
can slaves from abroad you may not expect or look 
for many more slave-States." 

Jefferson Davis, while opposing an immediate reop- 
ening of the trade, denied "any coincidence of opinion 
with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinful- 



212 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

ness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi, not of 
the African, dictates my conclusion." He thought to 
open the trade immediately would flood Mississippi 
with negroes by bringing in more than could be profit- 
ably and safely handled, but " this conclusion, in re- 
lation to Mississippi, is based upon my view of her 
present condition, not upon any general theory. It is 
not supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexi- 
co, or to any future acquisitions to be made south 
of the Rio Grande." 

But the rising tide of the power of those who be- 
lieved in human slavery had reached its highest level. 
While slave-holders were holding conventions in 
which to advocate the reopening of the slave-trade, 
the abolitionists were in a thousand ways proclaiming 
the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. A few were even proclaiming 
the strange doctrine that the superior race, instead of 
having, by virtue of its superiority, the right to op- 
press the weak, was, by the example and command of 
Almighty God, bound to uplift and carry the burden 
of the weak. A river of Jordan running bankful of 
blood lay before us, and we were about to bathe in it 
and be healed. 



CHAPTER XX 

WHEN THE END CAME 

Buchanan's Administration and the Slave-trade — When the 
Sham Efforts to Suppress Came to an End — Story of Cap- 
tain Gordon of the Erie, the First Slaver Pirate to be Exe- 
cuted in the United States. 

As hitherto noted, the slave-trade differed from all 
other kinds of traffic known to the history of the v^^orld. 
In every other traffic there was (and there is) a steady 
amelioration of the condition of all persons engaged in 
it. The African slave-trade to the Americas began 
with the work of a good bishop who saw that it was 
more humane to enslave the hardy African than the 
effeminate red aborigines. From that the trade de- 
scended to a level where it was, for that day, an ordi- 
nary commercial enterprise, and then, because it was 
profitable and was becoming steadily more profitable, 
it reached out to overwhelm with its suffering, as well 
as its shame, not only everyone connected with it, 
whether directly or indirectly, but it drenched with 
its sorrows uncounted thousands who had never had 
any part in it, and still other thousands who had 
opposed it. 

But even while Buchanan was striving to buy Cuba 
on the pretence that thus the slave-trade would be 
suppressed, the end of America's shame was at hand. 

213 



214 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

It was not in the blood of the race to perpetuate 
hypocrisy and injustice forever. 

Those of us who are old enough recall with strange 
feelings the tumultuous controversies of the days of 
the Buchanan Administration. The pelting of words 
was incessant, but back of all that and growing 
steadily more ominous, was the tornado roar of one 
mighty question, Shall the Right prevail in the United 
States of America ? 

Granville Sharp, as the friend of one oppressed 
negro, had asked that question, standing alone, in 
other years. Now tens of thousands of the mightiest, 
most heroic souls of the earth were standing up to 
answer it, not by words alone but by freely giving 
their life blood. 

Yet let no injustice be done now in recalling that 
controversy. As long as a people " holds its life in its 
hand, ready to give it for its honor (though a foolish 
honor) ; for its love (though a foolish love) ; for its 
business (though a foolish business), there is hope for 
it." The slave-owners, too, held their lives in their 
hands. No higher proof of their sincerity is known 
to man. Nathan Hale, whose statue stands in the 
City Hall Park of New York, reached out both hands 
(albeit with sorrow) when he welcomed to the further 
shore the spirits of those Americans who cheerfully 
went to their death in the David torpedo-boat, of 
Charleston harbor. We were to determine not only 
whether the right should prevail, but to see what was 
right, and our pool of Siloam was full to the brim of 
blood. 

But when that is said — when the entire sincerity of 
the masses of those who sought to perpetuate slavery 



WHEN THE END CAME 215 

is proclaimed — the fact remains (and we can all see it 
now) that our Declaration of Independence had been 
for three-quarters of a century a grinning mask. It 
could not remain so longer. The spirit that had 
inspired the men who made that Declaration, not 
fully knowing what they did, was ready at last to 
turn the mask into the flushed face of the goddess of 
America. A time had come when a President who 
could understand the immortal words was to be 
elected, and he was elected. The laws against the 
slave-trade were now to be executed. The spirit of 
the Declaration of Independence was now not only to 
be enacted in statutes, but, within limits, to become 
the faith of the people. 

Under Buchanan it was possible for the slave-bark 
Cora to be captured on the coast of Africa on the 
18th day of May, carried to New York, let go after a 
form of condemnation, and then captured once more 
on the slave-coast, on December 10 of the same year. 

AVith the advent of Abraham Lincoln the sham 
passed away. Here was a man who had the first 
characteristics of all heroes— sincerity and strength. 
He would, with charity for all and with malice 
toward none, and with such obstacles in his way as 
no American had ever faced before, and no American 
will ever face again— he would do his duty. Of all 
books that have been written here and may now be 
had for a price, there is none so well worth the study 
of an American reader, if he will but seek the heart of 
it, as a Life of Abraham Lincoln. But the American 
Carlyle has yet to come to place the heart of it plainly 
before us. 

In a letter regarding the slave-trade written by Mr. 



216 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

Seward to Lord L^^ons, on March 22, 1862, it is said 
that the last slave-smuggler was the Wanderer^ 
already described. Possibly— in fdct, very likely- 
small parties \vere brought over from Cuba after she 
landed her cargo, but she was the last regular slave- 
ship to come to our coasts. 

The blockade of the Confederate ports by the 
Federal ships, however, in 1861 ended all slave-smug- 
gling here. Nevertheless the smuggling of slaves into 
the Spanish colonies in America was carried on for a 
long time after our civil war ended. The trade is 
called smuggling because during all the weary years 
after 1820 — the weary years during which so many 
negroes were thrown overboard that every wave of the 
sea in the Middle Passage became a mound over a 
body that had been tortured to death — during all 
those years the laws of Spain prohibited the traffic. 
Mr. Seward, in view of the fact " that this infamous 
traffic has been carried on by persons resident in other 
countries, including the United States," was prepared 
to open negotiations for a convention with Her 
Majesty's Government that should be worthy of the 
civilizations of the age. The shams of previous ad- 
ministrations, and the clap-trap about the right of 
search and the sacredness of our flag, were to come to 
an end, and they did end in a treaty that was con- 
cluded at Washington on April 7, 1862. To give it 
effect. Congress made two appropriations of $900,000 
each. The days when an American cruiser, out of 
fifteen months' sei*vice in the African squadron, would 
spend no more than fifteen days on the slave-coast, as 
really happened under the sham, were now at an end. 
The days when American naval officers were to go 




THE HUMAN CARGO WAS UNDER THE CHARGE Of THE OLD RICE-FIELD NEGROES. 

See page 202. 



WHEN THE END CAME 217 

through the forms of executing the laws, while ham- 
pered by the Department, were also at an end. There 
were, indeed, slavers afloat thereafter. While the 
market existed, and such enormous profits were to be 
made, even the severest measures could, perhaps, but 
repress. By a treaty made with Great Britain on 
February 17, 1863, the limits of the territory wherein 
the mutual right of search existed were greatly ex- 
tended. Even as late as 1870, Great Britain and the 
United States had to strengthen still further their 
agreement for the suppression of the trade, because a 
few slavers were yet on the high seas. It was not 
until about 1886 that the Spaniards (and some Ameri- 
can citizens) ceased to own slaves in Cuba, but the 
slave-trade began its death throes — it for the first time 
felt a real strangling pressure on its throat — when this 
treaty was made. 

Detailed stories of some of the slavers owned in New 
York but trading to Cuba are to be had by the stu- 
dent in sufiicient number. For instance, George Howe, 
M.D., told the story of his experience in "The Last 
Slave-Ship," in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1890. 
The story of how Appleton Oaksmith, written also 
Oaks Smith), the son of an honored poetess, disgraced 
his name by trying to get away for a slaver voyage in 
the whaler bark Augusta is told in Government 
documents. This is a particularly interesting story 
from the fact that Oaksmith was prosecuted by Mr. 
Stewart L. Woodford, late United States Minister to 
Spain, then just beginning his public career by serving 
as an assistant to the United States District Attorney 
in New York City. It brings the slave-trade close 
down to the present day, so to speak, when we re- 



21S Tllf: AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

member that tlie well-known diplomat of 1898 began 
Ills public career by prosecuting a slaver. But all of 
these stories must be omitted in order to emphasize 
that of a slaver whose fate marked the end of the 
heinious traffic. 

In the summer of 18G0, Captain Nathaniel Gordon, of 
the ship Brie, took his vessel to Havana and there com- 
pleted an outfit for the slave-trade that he had begun 
buying in New York. Gordon was a citizen of Port- 
land, Me., and had made already, it was said, three 
slave voyages. On leaving Havana he went directly 
to the Congo River, and sailed forty-five miles up into 
the interior. There he discharged a cargo of liquor, 
and having prepared his ship for her return cargo of 
slaves he came down near the mouth of the stream, 
wliere on the afternoon of August 7, 1860, he brought 
on board the slaves, and " thrust them, densely 
crowded, between the decks, and immediately set sail 
for Cuba." The slaves numbered eight hundred and 
ninety, of whom but one hundred and seventy-two 
were men. The women numbered one hundred and 
six, and the remainder were boys and girls. Gordon 
was one of those slavers who carried children because 
it was safer to carry them. They would but flincli 
and scream when he tortured them ; they would never 
strike back. 

As it happened the United States warship MoJilcan 
was fifty miles off shore next morning, and the Erie, 
while crowding sail for Havana, was seen and capt- 
ured. The negroes were taken to Liberia and landed, 
while the Eric and Gordon were sent to New York 
for trial. The ship was soon disposed of. She had 
been taken with the slaves on board, and even in 1860 



WHEN THE END CAME 219 

she was sure to be condemned, because tlie condem- 
nation would bring considerable sums of money to all 
concerned in lier capture and condemnation. She 
was sold, on October 4th of the same year, at auction, 
for $7,823.25, showing she was a right good ship, for 
she measured but five hundred tons. 

To punish Gordon as a pirate under the law of 1820 
was another matter, and when he was first brought to 
face the charge there was a mistrial. But in the 
meantime a new administration had come in, and a 
District Attorney, E. Delafield Smith, who respected 
his oath of office, had been appointed. 

Gordon was once more put on trial on November 6, 
1861. He was defended by ex- Judge Dean and P. J. 
Joachimson, who were experienced in such cases. 
Judge Nelson presided. In two hours a jury was 
obtained. 

The papers of that day say that but few spectators 
were in court during the trial. The public showed 
very little interest in the case. The Civil War was in 
progress, and how could anyone stop to consider the 
trial of a ship captain who had been on trial once be- 
fore, had secured a disagreement of the jury, and, if 
precedent counted for anything, was likely to go free 
in the end ? Even the most sensational papers of the 
day gave the trial but scanty space. So, with never a 
thought that they were making important history, the 
Judge and the lawyers and the jury worked away. 
The plea, as was usual in such cases, was that Gordon 
was a passenger, having turned the command over to 
a foreigner carried along for the purpose. On the af- 
ternoon of Friday, November 8, the attorneys ended 
their part of the trial, Judge Nelson delivered his 



-j«- 



220 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

charge, and at 7 o'clock in the evening the jury re- 
tired. Twenty minutes later they came back with the 
verdict. 

" Guilty." 

"Gordon heard the verdict without emotion," so 
the reporters described the scene, and they were about 
the only spectators outside of those directly inter- 
ested in the case. 

But when that verdict had appeared in print, next 
day, the people of New York woke up to the im- 
portance of what had occurred. On Saturday, No- 
vember 30, w^hen motions for a new trial had been de- 
nied, and Gordon was commanded to stand up and 
hear his doom, he arose to his feet in a court-room 
"densely packed " with people who had come to hear 
the sentence of the first American slaver convicted as 
a pirate. 

As Gordon heard the command to stand up his face 
changed color rapidly, but once on his feet he recov' 
ered his composure, and in reply to the usual ques- 
tion said, with a forced smile, 

" I have nothing to say whatever." 

At that Judge Nelson began to speak. He recited 
the facts in the case, warned the prisoner that as he 
had shown no mercy to the unfortunate he could ex- 
pect none now from the Court, and ended by ordering 
that the slaver be, on February 7, 1862, between the 
hours of noon and three in the afternoon, hanged by 
the neck until he was dead. 

When February 7 came Gordon had been respited 
for two weeks by the President. "It was currentl}'- 
reported that the President had commuted the sen- 
tence," said one paper, but Marshal Murray knew 



WHEN THE END CAME 221 

better, and when Gordon looked in his face, on receiv- 
ing the respite, he saw his fate. 

' ' Mr. Marshal, then there is no hope V he asked. 

*' Not the slightest," replied Murray. 

There was no lack of effort, however, to save the 
pirate. Even on the last day of his life, one of his 
attorneys telegraphed that the Governor of the State 
had appealed to the President, and asked for a delay 
for a reply, but Murray explained that an arrangement 
had been concluded with the President by which no 
telegram from any source whatever should interfere. 

Nor was that all that was done to save him. 
Threats were made that a rescuing mob to storm the 
jail would be raised — threats that were really ominous, 
for that was a day when innocent negroes were hanged 
to lamp-posts by a New York mob. 

But a guard of eighty marines from the navy-yard 
filed into the yard of the city prison on the morning 
of February 21, 18G2, and there loaded their muskets 
with ball cartridges, and fixed their bayonets. And 
that ended the possibility of mob attacks. 

Meantime Gordon had passed the early part of the 
night in writing letters. At one o'clock in the morn- 
ing he went to sleep and slept for two hours. On 
waking he managed to swallow a dose of strychnine 
lie had obtained for the occasion. As it began to 
work he gnashed his teeth at the guards and shouted, 

" I've cheated you ! Pve cheated you ! " 

But he was mistaken, for physicians saved him alive 
and conscious for the gallows. Two or three notes 
were written by him after his recovery from the poison, 
and then, just before the noon hour, the Marshal came 
to the cell and in the usual course read the death 



222 THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE 

warrant and asked Gordon if he had anything to 
say. 

For a moment the prisoner was silent, and then in 
a firm voice he replied : 

"My conscience is clear. I have no fault to find 
with the treatment I have received from the Marshal 
and his Deputy, Mr. Thompson ; but any public man 
who will get up in open court and say to the jury, ' If 
you convict this prisoner, I will be the first man to 
sign a petition for his pardon,' and will then go to the 
Executive to prevent his commuting the sentence, is 
a man who will do anything to promote his own ends, 
I do not care what people may say.' 

It was a remarkable speech to make in the shadow 
of the gallows, for the charge it contained against 
District Attorney Smith was untrue. The reporters 
hunted up the stenographic report of the speech to 
the jury and found no such words in it. 

At noon, on February 21, 1862, Nathaniel Gordon, 
with a slanderous lie on his lips, started for the 
gallows. " He was deathly pale with terror [says the 
New York Tribune of February 22, 1862], his head 
hung over his shoulder, and his limbs almost refused 
their office. He tottered as he stood beneath the fatal 
beam, [so that] he had to be supported. At a given 
signal the cord was snapped asunder by the execu- 
tioner's axe and Nathaniel Gordon was hoisted aloft 
into mid-air. A few convulsive twitches of the body 
followed. The veins of his neck and hands swelled 
and stood out hard ; then the limbs lost their rigidity, 
the flesh assumed a livid hue, and the slave-trader, 
now a lump of dishonored clay, swung slowly to and 
fro in the frosty air." 



WHEN THE END CAME 223 

For more than three hundred years the oppressed 
had been crying from the foul hold of the slaver, 
''How long, O Lord, how long?" But when the axe 
fell, and the rope creaked to the weight of that dis- 
honored clay, the sweet angel of Mercy was at last 
able to reply : 

"Now." 



APPE^^3IX 



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js a 



BY JOHN R. SPEARS 
THE HISTORY OF OUR NAVY 

From its Origin to the Present Day, I775-J898 

'With more than 500 illustrations, maps and diagrams 

5 volumes, 12mo, $10.00 

CONTENTS 



VOLUMB I. 
Origin of the American Navy 
First Cruise of the Yankee Squadron 
Along Shore in 1776 
He Saw " the Countenance of the 

Enemy " 
Under the Crags of the " Tight Little 

Isle" 
John Paul Jones and the Ranger 
The First Submarine Warship 
Privateers of the Revolution 
John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme 

Richard 
After the Serapis Surrendered 
The Year 1779 in American Waters 
Building a New Navy 
War with Barbary Pirates 
Decatur and the Philadelphia 
Hand-to-Hand with the Pirates 
Why we Fought in 1812 
Appendix. 

VOLUMB III. 

When Porter Swept the Pacific 

Porter's Gallant Action at Valparaiso 

Tales of the Yankee Corvettes 

Mystery of the Last Wasp 

On the Upper Lakes in 1814 

To Defend the Northern Gateway 

Macdonough's Victory 

Samuel C. Reid of the Armstrong 

A Yankee Frigate Taken 

The Navy at the Battle of New Orleans 

Once More the Constitution 

In the Wastes of the South Atlantic 

In British Prisons 

Stories of the Duellists 

Among the West India Pirates 

Decatur and the Barbary Pirates 

Led a Hard Life and Got Few Thanks 

In the War with Mexico 

Expedition in Aid of Commerce 



VOLUMB II. 

Troubles on the Eve of War 

TheOutlook was, at First, not Pleasing 

The First Exhibit of Yankee Mettle 

A Race for the Life of a Nation. 

The Constitution and the Guerriere 

Fought in a Hatteras Gale 

Brought the Macedonian into Port 

When the Constitution Sank the /ava. 

Whipped in Fourteen Minutes 

Loss of Lawrence and the Chesapeake 

The Privateers of 1812 

Early Work on the Great Lakes 

The Battle on Lake Erie 

Incidents of the Battle on Lake Erie 

The War on Lake Ontario 

Loss of the Little Sloop Argus 

The Luck of a Yankee Cruiser 

Gunboats not Wholly Worthless 



VOLUME IV. 

The State of the Navy in 1859 
Blockading the Southern Ports 
Loss of the Norfolk Navy Yard 
A Story of Confederate Privateers 
The Fort of Hatteras Inlet Taken 
Along Shore in the Gulf of Mexico 
Story of the Trent Affair 
The Capture of Port Royal 
The Monitor and the Merrimac 
First Battle Between Ironclads 
With the Mississippi Gunboats 
Farragut at New Orleans 
Farragut at Mobile 
Tales of the Confederate Cruisers 
The Albemarle and Cushing 
The Navy at Charleston 
Capture of Fort Fisher 



VOLUME V. 

The War with Spain 

The Demand for Intervention — Teaching Spain to Despise Us — The White 
Squadron— Armored Cruisers and Battleships— Treacherous Destruction of the Maine 
—The War Message— First Shot of the War— Brave Work Along Shore— Dewey at 
Manila— Sampson's First Search for Cervera— The Oregon's Famous Run— Schley's 
Cruise to Santiago — The Blockade of Santiago — The Marines at Guantanamo — 
Auxiliaries and Naval Militia— Destruction of Cervera's Squadron— Seamen of the 
Squadrons Contrasted— Capture of Guam and Manila— Surrender of Santiago and 
Afterward— Our New Naval Programme. 



THE HISTORY OF OUR NAVY 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 

The Dial 
"Mr. Spears's 'History of Our Navy' is, all things con- 
sidered, the best that has yet been produced, and it is profusely 
and appropriately illustrated." 

Review of Reviews 

" The most ambitious historical work that has appeared in 
this country in the last year or so. Mr. Spears has performed 
his task in a most thorough and workmanlike manner, and with 
such a story to tell as that of naval achievements, the interest 
could not flag." 

The Independent 

"The work is done in a warm, inspiring and patriotic tone. 
It is a history to be proud of, and which we can turn to not 
only with pride for the past but with hope for the future. . . . 
a true gallery of most interesting and useful historic illustrations. ' ' 

Philadelphia Public Ledger 
' ' Reading the book one will find nothing that can be 
omitted . . . the fullest and most enlightening history of 
the American Navy ever issued." 

Brooklyn Eagle 
' ' His work must be regarded as the best history of the Navy 
that has been published ; it is an exceedingly interesting series 
of volumes." 

j^tlanta Constitution 
"It has remained for the Scribners to get out the most ex- 
haustive history of the United States Navy ever published." 

The Outlook 
' ' His four volumes constitute a dear, concise and capital 
history of American sea power." 

The Interior 
"And so, starting in simply and interestingly, the story pro- 
ceeds delightfully, for no opportunity is lost to make apparent 
and significant the pith of the story or its pointedness. " 

Chicago Evening Post 
" Mr. Spears has written a work which no American can read 
without interest and enthusiasm." 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers 

J53-I57 Fifth AvcQuc Jt J* ^ ^ New York 



^^G -J ,3,,^ 



i 



